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The fifth edi­tion of the Extrascape, the inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tion for the best extra vir­gin olive oil land­scapes, wound up after two days of con­fer­ences, debates and round tables with pro­duc­ers, agron­o­mists, national and inter­na­tional olive oil experts and enthusiasts. 

Held in the con­vent of Mary and Jesus in San Martino in Pensilis, in the province of Campobasso (Molise), Extrascape is a unique inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tion that rewards the best extra vir­gin olive oils com­bined with the most beau­ti­ful olive land­scapes. The orga­ni­za­tion is entrusted to the asso­ci­a­tion MolisExtra, that brings together farm­ers from Molise.

“Our chal­lenge is to go beyond the label, mak­ing avail­able to those who sell and to those who buy high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil new instru­ments to show and dis­cover the authen­tic­ity of peo­ple, land and there­fore prod­ucts,” said the event organizers.

40 com­pa­nies from Italy, Spain, Portugal and Chile par­tic­i­pated in the com­pe­ti­tion, sub­mit­ting pho­to­graphic mate­ri­als of their farms and sur­round­ing ter­ri­to­ries in addi­tion to their extra vir­gin olive oils. The board was com­posed by a panel that assessed EVOOs and a com­mit­tee that eval­u­ated land­scapes, coor­di­nated by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Landscape and Environment Design, Management and Planning’ PhD course of the Sapienza University of Rome. The final rank­ing was a result of the com­bi­na­tion of the two judgements.

“Extra vir­gin olive oil has inau­gu­rated a new ter­ri­tory, defined by the arti­san code, that is the ref­er­ence iden­tity within which pro­duc­ers will be able to draw their own pro­files, present their val­ues and build their image,” said mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion spe­cial­ist Gigi Mozzi. ​“The next step to trans­form excel­lent prod­ucts into suc­cess­ful ones will be to cross the bridge and, from the side of the man­u­fac­turer get to the side of the con­sumer, pass­ing from promises to val­ues, and from declared qual­ity to per­ceived qual­ity,” Mozzi said dur­ing his talk about the place­ment of qual­ity prod­ucts on the market.

Among the speak­ers coor­di­nated by Maurizio Pescari was Giorgio Mori who explained extrac­tion tech­niques; Alberto Grimelli and Amedeo De Franceschi dis­cussed the cor­rect label­ing of extra vir­gin olive oil; a les­son on design and man­age­ment of qual­ity olive-grow­ing land­scape was given by Achille Ippolito; and a his­tory of the olive tree was illus­trated by the agron­o­mist Cosimo Damiano Guarini.