New Initiatives Promote Olive Oil Culture in Northern Italy

Summary

Interest in extra vir­gin olive oil is grow­ing glob­ally, lead­ing to new ini­tia­tives such as L’Evo di Eva, an oleoteca in Turin, Italy, that pro­motes high-qual­ity pro­duc­ers through events, tast­ings, and col­lab­o­ra­tions. In Milan, the non-profit col­lec­tive Officina Enoica has expanded to include high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils, sup­port­ing pro­duc­ers and enthu­si­asts through social media posts, ded­i­cated web­site pages, and tast­ing events.

As inter­est in extra vir­gin olive oil grows glob­ally, new ini­tia­tives are being launched to pro­mote olive oil cul­ture and sup­port high-qual­ity pro­duc­ers. 

New olive oil-related projects have recently emerged in north­ern Italy, an area with increas­ing pro­duc­tion and a grow­ing num­ber of olive oil pro­fes­sion­als and enthu­si­asts.

In the heart of Turin, Piedmont’s cap­i­tal, Eva Collini opened L’Evo di Eva, the region’s first oleoteca – an Italian neol­o­gism for an olive oil shop. Its name is a play on words between the widely used acronym for extra vir­gin olive oil and her first name.

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Along with high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil, the shop also offers olive oil-based prod­ucts, includ­ing oil-pre­served veg­eta­bles and table olives, as well as wines and olive oil-based cos­metic prod­ucts.

“We serve lunch and an aper­i­tif, and orga­nize sev­eral evening events with the pro­duc­ers,” Collini said. ​“Everything revolves around the extra vir­gin olive oil, which is always present, even dur­ing the wine events.” 

“Also, we orga­nize guided tast­ings and events with Italian schools for for­eign­ers, and we col­lab­o­rate with pro­ducer orga­ni­za­tions and insti­tu­tional bod­ies to spread the cul­ture of olive oil.”

L’Evo di Eva recently opened in Turin to help introduce Italy’s fourth most populous city to the country’s high-quality extra virgin olive oil. (Photo: L’Evo di Eva)

Collini has recently been appointed one of the Maestri del Gusto (Masters of Taste) of Turin and its province by the Turin Chamber of Commerce, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with its chem­i­cal lab­o­ra­tory and Slow Food Italia.

Before becom­ing an olive pro­fes­sional and open­ing the oleoteca, Collini worked in the auto­mo­tive indus­try for 15 years. She dis­cov­ered her pas­sion for olive oil by chance while din­ing in a restau­rant in the his­tor­i­cal region of Langhe.

“While wait­ing for din­ner, I got a whiff of cut grass and other green notes. It was a lovely scent, and I thought it was com­ing from the kitchen,” she said.

However, Collini soon dis­cov­ered that the aro­mas came from a newly opened bot­tle of extra vir­gin olive oil brought to her table by the waiter and served in a small bowl for tast­ing.

“In that moment, a whole new world opened up to me,” she said. ​“Back home, I started sourc­ing the best olive oils I could find around.”

“At some point, there have been changes in my pro­fes­sional life,” Collini added. ​“It was my hus­band who moti­vated me to do some­thing on my own. He imme­di­ately said, ​‘Work with olive oil, since you love it so much,’ and so I decided to give it a try.” 

She began study­ing the olive oil mar­ket and dis­cov­ered that in Italy, there were only a few olive oil shops in the cen­tral and south­ern regions of the coun­try. 

Collini quickly deter­mined that an oleoteca in Turin was much needed. After attend­ing a series of tast­ing courses, she found the right spot down­town and opened the shop in August 2020, three months later than ini­tially planned due to the Covid-19 pan­demic restric­tions.

“From that moment on, this work has given me so much,” she said. ​“Furthermore, I never stopped train­ing, and I have become part of a tast­ing panel. I also recently attended a course for milling tech­ni­cians.”

Every day, on the shelves at L’Evo di Eva, vis­i­tors can find about 50 of the best Italian blends and mono­va­ri­etals from across the coun­try in rota­tion. There is also a selec­tion of oils made by a non-Italian pro­ducer.

Collini vis­its farms and attends trade fairs to select the best prod­ucts. She chooses each extra vir­gin olive oil not only for its qual­ity but also based on the vision behind it. 

As her com­pany thrives, more pro­duc­ers have pro­posed start­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tion, and Collini is already work­ing on the upcom­ing olive oil cam­paign.

“What I like most about this job is the expres­sions of the peo­ple when they sense the aro­mas,” she said, espe­cially from peo­ple new to or skep­ti­cal of olive oil tast­ing.

About two hours up the A4, in Milan, the cap­i­tal of neigh­bor­ing Lombardy, the non-profit col­lec­tive Officina Enoica is one of the lat­est nov­el­ties in the sec­tor. 

While its name refers to an oeno­log­i­cal work­shop, as it was founded to pro­mote arti­sanal wines, it has recently expanded to include high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils.

“We started just some months ago, but we are already hav­ing excel­lent feed­back from pro­duc­ers and enthu­si­asts,” said co-founder Giovanni Camocardi. 

With a group of friends, includ­ing pro­duc­ers, som­me­liers, wine lovers and small dis­trib­u­tors, he cre­ated an asso­ci­a­tion in 2009. Shortly after, they were invited by the munic­i­pal­ity of Asti to col­lab­o­rate on a wine event.

“The part­ner­ship with the town hall was sup­posed to last one year, but it ended up being longer, from 2010 to 2018,” Camocardi said. ​“Over time, our col­lec­tive has writ­ten some wine guides with Altraeconomia [an Italian pub­lish­ing house engaged in sol­i­dar­ity econ­omy], and orga­nized events, includ­ing big gath­er­ings with over 100 wine pro­duc­ers.”

“Our ini­tia­tive is non-profit, so we always keep the par­tic­i­pa­tion fees as low as pos­si­ble, and mem­ber­ship to our asso­ci­a­tion is free,” he added. 

A for­mer light­ing tech­ni­cian, before devot­ing him­self to the agri-food sec­tor, Camocardi worked for 40 years in the­aters, includ­ing pres­ti­gious venues such as La Scala in Milan.

“Thanks to my pre­vi­ous job, I trav­eled all over Italy, and this fueled a curios­ity about the dif­fer­ent foods,” he said. ​“I got to dis­cover agri-food excel­lences that were unknown else­where. This is easy today with the cur­rent means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but not back then. That expe­ri­ence allowed me to get closer to the farm­ing world.”

A defin­ing moment for Camocardi was when he met the renowned Italian gas­tronome Luigi Veronelli in 2000.

The Officina Enoica collective now tastes ad features extra virgin olive oil producers along with winemakers. (Photo: Officina Enoica)

“We became friends and I took some pho­tos for his mag­a­zine,” he said. ​“Thanks to him, I devel­oped my pas­sion for wine. I under­stand the impor­tance of not only what is in the glass, but espe­cially of the peo­ple who make the prod­uct.”

“Veronelli then intro­duced me to extra vir­gin olive oil, with his focus on mono­va­ri­etals and pit­ted oils,” Camocardi added, lead­ing him to attend a tast­ing course. 

Since its incep­tion, the col­lec­tive had been exclu­sively ded­i­cated to arti­sanal wines, until a few months ago, when a wine pro­ducer asked the group to taste his extra vir­gin olive oil. Having appre­ci­ated the prod­uct, the col­lec­tive made a post about its organolep­tic pro­file on Instagram.

“After that post, we had had so many requests from high-qual­ity pro­duc­ers that we decided to reg­u­larly include extra vir­gin olive oils and olive grow­ers on our chan­nels,” Camocardi explained.

On the Officina Enoica’s web­site, in the sec­tion ded­i­cated to wine­mak­ers and olive grow­ers, the col­lec­tive cre­ates a page for each com­pany. 

In par­al­lel, the extra vir­gin olive oils are dis­played on the Officina Enoica’s Instagram page, along with wines. Each post usu­ally includes a photo of the bot­tle and a descrip­tion of the sen­sory pro­file.

“Just as we have com­mu­ni­cated arti­sanal wines so far, we are now doing it with extra vir­gin olive oils, too,” Camocardi said. ​“We are keen to sup­port young busi­nesses, which do not have the capa­bil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate their prod­ucts well.”

“We always start with the peo­ple; there must be a human story behind the prod­uct,” he added. ​“When a pro­ducer reaches out and asks us to taste a sam­ple, we tell them that we need to know the peo­ple who make the prod­uct.”

The collective’s head­quar­ters are in the Acquabella neigh­bor­hood, close to Milan’s city cen­ter. The asso­ciates usu­ally meet once a week to taste and dis­cuss the prod­ucts and the projects behind them.

“Several pro­duc­ers asked us to orga­nize tast­ing events like we already do with wine, and there­fore we are con­sid­er­ing this option for the next olive oil har­vest,” Camocardi said. 

“We could arrange meet­ings at our loca­tion, or in other venues, in Milan and all around Italy,” he added. We are now receiv­ing a great response from the olive oil pro­duc­ers. Their enthu­si­asm and the pas­sion they put into their work, as well as the qual­ity of the prod­ucts we are tast­ing, make us want to con­tinue to delve into and spread the olive oil cul­ture.”