First OlivitalyMed Festival Hailed as Success in Cilento

Organizers and atten­dees have hailed the pre­mier OlivitalyMed fes­ti­val as a suc­cess.

Held from May 4^th to 6^th at the thou­sand-year-old Castle of Rocca Cilento in Campania, the event brought together pro­duc­ers, pol­i­cy­mak­ers and enthu­si­asts for tast­ings, con­fer­ences and dis­cus­sion.

“It is a suc­cess that makes us proud and the real­iza­tion of his dream to estab­lish an event in Cilento that demon­strates the thou­sands of facets of extra vir­gin olive oil,” said the Sgueglia fam­ily, the venue’s owner and orga­nizer. 

The event was the brain­child of the late Stefano Sgueglia. ​“He had imag­ined a trans­ver­sal pro­gram capa­ble of sat­is­fy­ing both the expec­ta­tions of pro­fes­sion­als and the curios­ity of new­com­ers,” the fam­ily said. ​“Indeed, dur­ing these three days, the many vis­i­tors have shown great inter­est and crowded the rooms and spaces of the cas­tle.”

Olive oil enthu­si­asts and indus­try experts in atten­dance had the oppor­tu­nity to par­tic­i­pate in free and guided tast­ings and con­fer­ences about health, cook­ing and sci­ence. 

It was no coin­ci­dence that Cilento was the cho­sen venue for OlivitalyMed. The south­ern part of the province of Salerno is the birth­place of the study that led to the sci­en­tific val­i­da­tion of the Mediterranean diet. 

In 1962, Ancel Keys and his team of researchers set­tled in Pioppi, where they started research­ing for the Seven Countries Study to inves­ti­gate the cor­re­la­tion between diet, lifestyle and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease.

“This is an impor­tant ini­tia­tive for this area, which is devoted to the pro­duc­tion of extra vir­gin olive oil and where the foun­da­tions of the Mediterranean diet were laid down over 40 years ago,” said Giuseppe Coccorullo, the pres­i­dent of the Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni National Park author­ity.

“The olive tree is a fun­da­men­tal plant of our park, where the dif­fer­ent olive vari­eties enrich the local bio­di­ver­sity,” he added. ​“The Mediterranean diet is not only a world her­itage but an asset for the local economies; it is not just a dietary pat­tern but a lifestyle, which finds its ideal set­ting in this envi­ron­ment, where out­door activ­i­ties and sports can be prac­ticed safely and health­ily.”

During the fes­ti­val, a spa­cious hall hosted the stands of extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­ers from Campania. At the same time, another large area was ded­i­cated to pro­duc­ers from other Italian regions and some of the Mediterranean Diet Emblematic Communities. 

In these spaces, vis­i­tors and buy­ers could talk with pro­duc­ers and enjoy a free tast­ing of their prod­ucts.

In the out­door areas, the atten­dees found the stands of sev­eral local food arti­sans, offer­ing seafood and plant-based dishes, pas­try and bak­ery prod­ucts, gelato and cock­tails paired with the best extra vir­gin olive oils from Cilento.

Among them was the pizza maker Cristian Santomauro, one of the ambas­sadors of the Mediterranean diet, who pre­pared Ammaccata, a typ­i­cal pizza baked in a wood-burn­ing oven. 

Ammaccata is a reg­is­tered trade­mark in the national list of Traditional Agri-food Products, which have such a lim­ited dif­fu­sion that they are not eli­gi­ble for the European Union Protected Designation of Origin and Protected Geographical Indication cer­ti­fi­ca­tions but still offer a qual­ity guar­an­tee.

“This is an ancient recipe that I have learned from my grand­mother, Teresa,” Santomauro said. ​“Unlike pizza, it is not round but oval. Its com­po­si­tion includes three ancient grains: Saragolla durum wheat and a mix of Risciola and Carosella soft wheat.”

Santomauro kneads the dough by hand in a large wooden trough before top­ping it with dif­fer­ent ingre­di­ents. 

“Every type of Ammaccata is paired with an extra vir­gin olive oil,” he said. ​“Today, I am prepar­ing the ​‘clas­sic’ ver­sion with cooked tomato sauce, moun­tain oregano, grated aged Cilento caciori­cotta cheese and a Rotondella mono­va­ri­etal.” 

“There are two more ver­sions, one called ​‘Schietta’ (Italian for out­spo­ken), which I pre­pare with gar­lic, oregano, Menaica anchovies and a mono­va­ri­etal of Salella, and one closed like a cal­zone, stuffed with wild veg­eta­bles cooked with a Cilento PDO extra vir­gin olive oil,” he added. ​“To this stuff­ing, accord­ing to the sea­son, I add Menaica anchovies, cracked Salella olives or Cilento caciori­cotta, all Slow Food Presidia.”

The infor­ma­tive seg­ment of OlivitalyMed began with a dis­cus­sion of har­mony and extra vir­gin olive oil led by con­duc­tor Giuseppe Vessicchio and nutri­tional sci­ence spe­cial­ist Michele Scognamiglio. 

The cycle of con­fer­ences sched­uled for the event then started with a sem­i­nar on the sci­ences of extra vir­gin olive oil, which offered an overview of the lat­est research devel­op­ments with a focus on nutri­tion and dis­ease pre­ven­tion.

Among the speak­ers was Raffaele Sacchi, coor­di­na­tor of the degree course in Mediterranean gas­tro­nomic sci­ences at the Department of Agriculture of the University of Naples ​‘Federico II.

“Extra vir­gin olive oil is the most pow­er­ful func­tional food of the Mediterranean diet,” he said. ​“Its impor­tance in daily use, both raw and dur­ing cook­ing, is demon­strated by the numer­ous ben­e­fi­cial and pre­ven­tive func­tions, includ­ing anti-inflam­ma­tory, antiox­i­dant and anti-aging, hypoten­sive, car­dio- and neuro-pro­tec­tive, anti-dia­betic, sati­at­ing, and so on.” 

“Furthermore, it is a fra­grant, pun­gent, lively food, an active ingre­di­ent in all our tra­di­tional prepa­ra­tions, from ragù to fried foods, from canned tuna to desserts and even gelato,” Sacchi added.

A series of mas­ter­classes, includ­ing guided tast­ings, took place over three days: a sen­sory analy­sis of extra vir­gin olive oils with des­ig­na­tions of ori­gin pro­duced in Campania, led by Maria Luisa Ambrosino, the Naples Chamber of Commerce panel leader.

The event also fea­tured guided tast­ings of oils from the Gargano area of Puglia and the wider Mediterranean basin. Another event focused on how extra vir­gin olive oil fla­vors vary between regions.

The pro­gram con­tin­ued with a con­fer­ence on oleo­tourism with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Campania and national and local asso­ci­a­tions. 

Then, the con­fer­ence titled ​“Evofuturo” with experts and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of pro­ducer orga­ni­za­tions focused on the sec­tor’s prospects and forth­com­ing chal­lenges. 

This was fol­lowed by a talk titled ​“Conversations about Pizza” between pizza chef Franco Pepe (fea­tured in Netflix’s Chef’s Table Pizza), pro­ducer and miller Nicolangelo Marsicani and jour­nal­ist Stefano Carboni.

“This talk has brought to light some crit­i­cal issues and sev­eral ele­ments to work on, like the impor­tance of the con­sumer edu­ca­tion to qual­ity, the rec­og­niz­abil­ity of the prod­uct linked to the ter­ri­to­ri­al­ity and the actions to be taken to improve the com­mu­ni­ca­tion,” Carboni said. 

The event dis­cussed the emerg­ing role that cater­ing can play in pro­mot­ing extra vir­gin olive oil as a key ingre­di­ent in regional cuisines.

“However, we can say that today, con­sumers’ aware­ness is increas­ing, and we all have more crit­i­cal tools to choose the food we put on our table,” Carboni said. ​“In this sense, I bor­row the renowned sen­tence by the philoso­pher Ludwig Feuerbach, ​‘we are what we eat,’ to say that today ​‘we eat what we are.’”

These obser­va­tions prompted a rich dis­cus­sion that con­tin­ued dur­ing the con­clu­sive con­fer­ence on the role of extra vir­gin olive oil in the cater­ing sec­tor.

“OlivItalyMed was not only a moment for tech­ni­cal analy­sis and busi­ness meet­ings, but above all, an exchange of views, cul­tures and knowl­edge,” said Marsicani, who was respon­si­ble for the tech­ni­cal orga­ni­za­tion of the event. 

“For Cilento, an iconic place for extra vir­gin olive oil, it was a moment of com­par­i­son with other olive cul­ti­va­tions that seem to per­form bet­ter on the mar­kets, and this com­par­i­son, if done with fore­sight and intel­li­gence, can pro­vide the inspi­ra­tion for improv­ing the autochtho­nous pro­duc­tions by enhanc­ing their authen­tic­ity,” he added.

“For the national play­ers, it was a moment of dis­cus­sion to define the cur­rent crit­i­cal issues and draw a path towards the future of extra vir­gin olive oil,” Marsicani con­tin­ued. 

Organizers said the event pro­vided an oppor­tu­nity to pull local and national pro­duc­ers into the future, encour­ag­ing them to aban­don tra­di­tional prac­tices that lower qual­ity and embrace a new cul­ture cen­tered around ​“fruity, bit­ter and spicy extra vir­gin olive oil enlivened by aro­matic­ity and beauty.”

The orga­niz­ers are already work­ing on the next edi­tion of OlivitalyMed. All the infor­ma­tion can be found on the event web­site.