`Three-Day Celebration of Olive Oil in Sardinia - Olive Oil Times

Three-Day Celebration of Olive Oil in Sardinia

By Alexandre Francois
May. 14, 2013 10:09 UTC

Olive oil lovers took part in the three-day cul­tural event La degus­ta­trice di olio d’oliva,” held in the munic­i­pal­ity of Alghero, Sardinia.

The 6th edi­tion of the event closed on May 4 with its tra­di­tional tast­ing con­test.

The com­pe­ti­tion is grow­ing in pop­u­lar­ity,” said an orga­nizer, notably attract­ing Japanese and German nation­als.”

The con­test had two main sec­tions: A prac­ti­cal one that mea­sured the abil­ity of can­di­dates to dif­fer­en­ti­ate among the vari­ety, ori­gin, inten­sity and defects of extra vir­gin oil; and a the­o­ret­i­cal one with 35 mul­ti­ple choice ques­tions on top­ics includ­ing tech­niques for olive cul­ti­va­tion and label­ing norms of olive oil oil prod­ucts.

Professional Italian olive oil tasters, all from regions out­side Sardinia, out­per­formed non­pro­fes­sional local tasters and made it to the 3 steps of the podium.


Stefano Lubrano

This not just about the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the local olive oil pro­duc­tion; it involves other syn­er­getic ele­ments such as the degus­ta­tion and the regional ecosys­tem,” says Stefano Lubrano, pres­i­dent of the nat­ural park of Porto Conte.

Another pur­pose of this edi­tion was to teach about the ben­e­fits of olive oil to the youngest. Children from the pri­mary school of Santa Maria La Palma went on an exploratory jour­ney in which they learned about their ter­ri­tory, and the impor­tance of a healthy diet.

The eco­nomic impor­tance of olive oil for the munic­i­pal­ity of Alghero was high­lighted dur­ing the con­ven­tion Donne, Olio e Dintorni” (“Women, Olive oil and Surroundings”). The local econ­omy sig­nif­i­cantly depends on the pro­duc­tion of olive oil,” sais Antonella Casu, respon­si­ble for the ter­ri­to­r­ial ser­vice of the munic­i­pal­ity and orga­ni­za­tion LAORE Sardinia.

South Italian regions typ­i­cally have a big olive pro­duc­tion. According to the National Institute for Statistics, Apulia and Calabria are the largest domes­tic pro­duc­ers with an aver­age annual pro­duc­tion of 240,000 and 230,000 tons, or about 30 times the pro­duc­tion of Sardinia.



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