European Union Expands Monte de Etna PDO Territory in Sicily

The European Union has expanded the ter­ri­tory of the Monte Etna PDO in Sicily, allow­ing more grow­ers, millers and bot­tlers to label their extra vir­gin olive oil with the geo­graph­i­cal indi­ca­tor.

Previously, only 18 Sicilian munic­i­pal­i­ties located on the west­ern slope of Europe’s tallest active vol­cano were eli­gi­ble for the Protected Designation of Origin cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“It took us almost 10 years to have the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion include the full ter­ri­tory of another 25 munic­i­pal­i­ties on the east­ern side of Mount Etna,” Giosué Catania, pres­i­dent of the Monte Etna PDO Consortium, told Olive Oil Times.

According to the con­sor­tium, the new rules expand the poten­tial pro­duc­tion area of the Monte Etna PDO from 750,000 olive trees on 5,500 hectares to more than one mil­lion on 7,300 hectares. As a result, the num­ber of farms and pro­duc­ers poten­tially affected by the change will rise from 4,500 to approx­i­mately 5,800.

“If we are talk­ing about the poten­tial PDO extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­tion, we esti­mate that under the new rules, it could reach between 1.5 and 1.8 mil­lion liters and an over­all turnover of €15 to €17 mil­lion,” Catania said.

While the PDO area is now sig­nif­i­cantly larger, not all farms and com­pa­nies will nec­es­sar­ily be inter­ested in fol­low­ing the steps nec­es­sary to receive the Mont Etna PDO cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“Under the old cri­te­ria, we have 46 mem­bers in the pro­duc­tion chain with approx­i­mately 200 hectares of cer­ti­fied pro­duc­tion area and more than 45,000 liters of cer­ti­fied PDO pro­duc­tion,” Catania said.

One of the chal­lenges pro­duc­ers in the Monte Etna PDO area faced when try­ing to adhere to the old cri­te­ria or to retain their sta­tus as PDO-cer­ti­fied pro­duc­ers has been cli­mate change, which has impacted the acid­ity lev­els of their extra vir­gin olive oils.

More specif­i­cally, it has slightly increased linoleic and linolenic aver­age acid­ity. Such phe­nom­e­non is expressly cited by the E.U.-approved new dis­ci­pli­nary.

“These two mark­ers need to be changed because a grow­ing num­ber of batches of oil from the area cov­ered by the Monte Etna Protected Designation of Origin have failed to obtain cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in recent years due to hav­ing a higher linoleic acid and linolenic acid con­tent than the val­ues cur­rently set in the prod­uct spec­i­fi­ca­tion,” the E.U. wrote.

“Studies show that this is linked to the increase in aver­age tem­per­a­tures and the sig­nif­i­cant drop in rain­fall that has taken place in recent years, alter­ing the acid­ity pro­file of Monte Etna oil,” they added.

Therefore, the max­i­mum lev­els of both acids have been raised with the new rules. As a result, accept­able linoleic acid­ity rose from a max­i­mum of 10 per­cent to 13.5 per­cent and linolenic from 0.8 per­cent to 0.9 per­cent.

“Of course, it does not affect in any way the qual­ity of the result­ing extra vir­gin olive oil and both lev­els are way below those found in many other PDOs dis­ci­pli­nary,” Catania said.

The most rel­e­vant con­se­quence of such changes is the oppor­tu­nity that they open up for more local pro­duc­ers to add value to their extra vir­gin olive oils and mar­ket them as Monte Etna PDO.

Monte Etna PDO is an extra vir­gin olive oil pri­mar­ily made from the Nocellara Etnea vari­ety, which must con­sti­tute at least 65 per­cent of the total vol­ume, accord­ing to the PDO rules.

Among the most inter­est­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of those trees are their larger-than-aver­age yields and the pos­si­bil­ity to grow them at higher alti­tudes.

“We live in a moun­tain­ous ter­ri­tory, and that means grow­ing olives at 900 or even 1,000 meters above sea level in a sunny breezy and proper Mediterranean cli­mate, which adds to the iden­tity of this prod­uct,” Catania said.

“Our extra vir­gin olive oil is the son of a won­der­fully unsta­ble ter­ri­tory,” he added. ​“Etna is an active vol­cano and that envelops olive grow­ing in feel­ings and bio­di­ver­sity which are com­pletely unique.”

Catania added how olive farm­ing in such a chal­leng­ing envi­ron­ment is con­sid­ered an exam­ple of ​“heroic agri­cul­ture,” a term coined to describe farm­ing in areas where the land is too steep or too remote for mechan­i­cal assis­tance.

Such char­ac­ter­is­tics impact pro­duc­tion costs and yields but also con­tributes to the unique iden­tity of local extra vir­gin olive oils. It is a ter­ri­tory char­ac­ter­ized by ancient trees, steep slopes and small lava stone walls.

“Olive grow­ing has been a con­stant pres­ence here for gen­er­a­tions. Olive trees are a her­itage that goes beyond olive oil mak­ing, as they belong to the ter­ri­tory and its land­scape,” Catania said.

“Ancient myths cer­tify such her­itage, such as the Cyclops Polyphemus, a per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of Mount Etna, whose fire-soaked eye gets blinded by an olive trunk han­dled by Ulysses, who also had slept on a bed made of olive wood,” he added. ​“Phoenicians and Greeks intro­duced the olive trees, and ancient Romans imported olive oil from this land acknowl­edg­ing its high qual­ity.”

Along with the his­tory and tra­di­tion, Catania added that extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duced on the slopes of Mount Etna has a unique organolep­tic pro­file.

“It is a fruity extra vir­gin olive oil with hints of herbs, arti­choke and green tomato, enriched by a har­mony of bit­ter and pun­gent notes,” Catania said. ​“It is a del­i­cate extra vir­gin olive oil, a prod­uct that can express its best when used with fish and with Mediterranean diet foods.”

“Thanks to the updated rules, we esti­mate that start­ing from this sea­son, we will assess a strong growth in cer­ti­fied pro­duc­tion vol­umes, from 70 to 100 per­cent when com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year,” he con­cluded. ​“The Monte Etna PDO is under­go­ing an evo­lu­tion­ary step which will allow us to pro­tect the prod­uct and pro­mote it on the mar­ket.”

• European Union
• European Union