Sol&Agrifood, Italy's Showcase for Quality Foods

Sol & Agrifood is the event held along­side Vinitaly, orga­nized by Veronafiere, that has become a ref­er­ence point in Italy for food oper­a­tors who look for pro­duc­tive niches of excel­lence to serve the more demand­ing and mul­ti­fac­eted seg­ments of the mar­ket.

A show­case for agri-food prod­ucts like pasta, bak­ery prod­ucts, beer, cheese, choco­late, cof­fee, pre­serves, condi­ments and cold cuts, it is a lead­ing trade fair for high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil, and a place where buy­ers have the oppor­tu­nity to expe­ri­ence the use of the prod­ucts through cook­ing events, edu­ca­tional tours and tast­ings. The goal is to spread the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal cul­ture and increase the aware­ness of the dif­fer­ence between indus­trial prod­ucts and excel­lent ones.

This edi­tion, held April 10 – 13, was vis­ited by nearly 15,000 for­eign oper­a­tors from 80 coun­tries out of a total of over 64,000 vis­i­tors. Veronafiere devel­oped new ser­vices for the incom­ing for­eign trade del­e­ga­tions, assisted this year by the Italian Trade Agency ICE with the Ministry of eco­nomic devel­op­ment.

The for­eign buy­ers met with Italian pro­duc­ers with their offer of ter­ri­to­r­ial pro­duc­tions, as well as the col­lec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Morocco and Croatia, and par­tic­i­pated in tai­lored tast­ings and events.

An inter­na­tional olive oil com­pe­ti­tion, Sol d’Oro, was orga­nized as a pre­view to Sol&Agrifood. Aimed to pro­mote the world’s best extra vir­gin olive oils and encour­age improve­ments in pro­duc­tion and qual­ity, the com­pe­ti­tion is divided into two branches: Sol d’Oro Northern Hemisphere, and Sol d’Oro Southern Hemisphere, for the pro­duc­ing coun­tries south of the Equator. Every edi­tion is held in the pro­duc­ing coun­tries on a rotat­ing basis.

In order to to make the chal­lenge more global, the Sol d’Oro Southern Hemisphere edi­tion was also attended by the win­ners of the Sol d’Oro SH from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, South Africa and Uruguay.

This edition’s olive oils were assessed by a panel of inter­na­tional tasters from Italy, Slovenia, Portugal, Argentina, California and Greece. ​“More and more pro­duc­ers are achiev­ing the priv­i­lege of qual­ity,” said one of the Italian mem­bers of the judg­ing panel, Giulio Scatolini, panel leader of Unaprol Rome, Aprol Perugia and Capol Latina, in the field of sen­sory analy­sis since 1987. ​“Thanks to the excel­lent sea­son, we could assess great extra vir­gin olive oils. The qual­i­ta­tive lead­er­ship in this edi­tion of Sol d’Oro is Italian, fol­lowed by the excel­lent level of Spain.

“The Italian pro­duc­tive sys­tem that many view as uneco­nom­i­cal, is one of those that can give you the high­est qual­ity,” Scatolini said. ​“Companies of con­tained dimen­sion which imple­ment a high-level sys­tem of con­trol of every detail and crit­i­cal point, would not be pos­si­ble to man­age with large dimen­sions and quan­ti­ties.”

Regarding the best pro­duc­tion areas, ​“among the Italian regions, a pleas­ant sur­prise was the Basilicata region, where many young peo­ple are reor­ga­niz­ing and mod­ern­iz­ing farms with great results. In the south­ern hemi­sphere Chile and South Africa, although with still lim­ited quan­ti­ties, reached very good qual­ity lev­els.”

• Sol&Agrifood