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The fourth edi­tion of the national com­pe­ti­tion for the best table olives Monna Oliva wound up with an event held on June 24 in Latina, in the heart of Agro Pon­tino (Lazio), where the best of about 90 par­tic­i­pants received recog­ni­tion for their skills in olive pro­cess­ing.

Sev­eral pro­duc­ers from Lig­uria, Marche, Lazio, Abruzzo, Molise, Cam­pa­nia, Basil­i­cata, Apu­lia, Cal­abria, Sicily and Sar­dinia reached excep­tional lev­els of qual­ity despite the poor sea­son, accord­ing to the group of tasters which assessed the sam­ples under the super­vi­sion of panel leader Ivano Capri­oli.

Along the route of the des­ig­na­tions of ori­gin, the pre­vi­ous edi­tions of Monna Oliva were host in Castel­ve­trano (Sicily), Cerig­nola (Apu­lia), and Ascoli Piceno (Marche).

The lat­est venue of the itin­er­ant event was cho­sen to honor the recent recog­ni­tion of pro­tected denom­i­na­tion of ori­gin (PDO) obtained by the Oliva di Gaeta, whose denom­i­na­tion is now reserved exclu­sively for table olives of the vari­ety Itrana, also known as Gae­tana, of the black type, which meet the require­ments laid down by the pro­duc­tion spec­i­fi­ca­tion.

“Finally, Ital­ian table olives included a new Euro­pean star,” said the pres­i­dent of the Mediter­ranean Union of Oil Tasters (UMAO), Paola Fio­ra­vanti, who con­ceived the com­pe­ti­tion. ​“Since Decem­ber, the Oliva di Gaeta joined the PDOs Nocel­lara del Belice, Bella della Dau­nia and Ascolana del Piceno.”

Fio­ra­vanti explained that this olive comes from the cul­ti­var Itrana, which can be nat­u­rally sweet­ened both when the fruit is per­fectly mature in the ver­sion of the Oliva di Gaeta DOP, and when it is still green; in this case, the whole fruit can be nat­u­rally processed or cracked with salt and then sea­soned.

“Those who care about the bio­di­ver­sity of Ital­ian cul­ti­vars should pro­mote table olives and denom­i­na­tions of ori­gin as a valu­able sup­port to our pro­duc­ers,” Fio­ra­vanti con­sid­ered. ​“The table olives sec­tor is still a mar­ket niche, but in recent years it devel­oped and gave rise to new oppor­tu­ni­ties, partly thanks to a change in people’s lifestyle and dietary habits,” she observed, point­ing out that, accord­ing to the Inter­na­tional Olive Coun­cil, table con­sump­tion increased by 173 per­cent over the last 25 years.

Other eco­nomic and tech­ni­cal data were pre­sented dur­ing the third National Forum on the Pro­duc­tion of Table Olives, which pre­ceded the award cer­e­mony. Mod­er­ated by the jour­nal­ist Maria Antoni­etta Palumbo, speeches on the sec­tor were given by the mayor of Latina, Dami­ano Coletta, the chair­man of the con­sor­tium of indus­trial devel­op­ment Roma Latina, Carlo Scarchilli, the pres­i­dent of the Province of Latina, Eleonora Della Penna, the pres­i­dent of the asso­ci­a­tion of tasters of Latina Capol, Lino Cen­tauri, the national coun­cilor of Città dell’Olio, Benedetto Mis­cios­cia, and the Lazio Region agri­cul­ture min­is­ter, Carlo Haus­mann.

On behalf of pro­duc­ers, there were con­tri­bu­tions from an expert in rural poli­cies, Anto­nio Stea, an expert in table olives, Alberto Bono, and Franco Lom­bardo of Geo­live Belice LLC.

Monna Oliva aims to sup­port the table olive sec­tor by pro­mot­ing the work of Ital­ian man­u­fac­tur­ers, whether they use tra­di­tional sys­tems or con­trolled and mech­a­nized meth­ods. Among these, the Cal­abrian farmer Francesco Gabriele received an hon­or­able men­tion for his nat­ural Bella di Cerig­nola.

“I am delighted with this recog­ni­tion which rewarded my research in this field,” Gabriele said, and he explained that Bella di Cerig­nola is gen­er­ally lye-cured and com­pletely sweet­ened, but he processed it with the nat­ural method in order to reg­u­late deb­it­ter­ing and crunch­i­ness.

“In this way, the con­sumer can bet­ter per­ceive the ori­gin of olive because nat­ural pro­cess­ing enhances the typ­i­cal taste of the cul­ti­var,” he explained. ​“In my opin­ion, with an organic man­age­ment, good water and good salt you can obtain a great prod­uct,” Gabriele con­cluded, spec­i­fy­ing that he used the salt of the nat­ural salt pans reserve of Tra­pani and Paceco, in Sicily, and car­ried out strict con­trols on water.

The list of the win­ners can be found on the Monna Oliva web­site.

• Monna Oliva


• UMAO