Canneto Sabino: A Living Legacy of Sabina's Olive Oil Tradition

In the enchant­ing region of Sabina, the endur­ing art of olive oil pro­duc­tion is vibrantly embod­ied in the mag­nif­i­cent olive tree of Canneto Sabino.

With a sto­ried past dat­ing back cen­turies, this awe-inspir­ing tree is a tes­ta­ment to the endur­ing her­itage of olive cul­ti­va­tion in the south­east­ern region of Lazio.

According to local leg­ends, this majes­tic Olivastrone’s roots can be traced to the reign of Sabino Numa Pompilio, the king of Rome, from 715 to 673 BCE.

However, his­tor­i­cal esti­mates sug­gest a more plau­si­ble age of around a mil­len­nium, sit­u­at­ing its plant­ing dur­ing the momen­tous recla­ma­tion efforts led by the Benedictine monks of Farfa in the Canneto region.

Remnants of this period can still be seen in the pre­served Tanteri house and the adja­cent chapel of Madonna della Neve.

Numerous ancient doc­u­ments tes­tify to the Sabina region’s long­stand­ing tra­di­tion of olive cul­ti­va­tion.

In his work Geography, the renowned his­to­rian Strabo wrote of the extra­or­di­nary abun­dance of olive trees that graced the fer­tile soil of Sabina.

Marco Terenzio Varrone, in his sem­i­nal work De re rus­tica, pro­vided time­less advice on olive cul­ti­va­tion, lay­ing the foun­da­tion for Sabina’s esteemed olive oil pro­duc­tion meth­ods.

Archaeological dis­cov­er­ies fur­ther illu­mi­nate the region’s deep-rooted con­nec­tion to olives. The remark­able find of the Poggio Sommavilla flask believed to date back to the 7^th cen­tury BCE and now housed in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, not only rep­re­sents the old­est known exam­ple of pre-Roman Sabine script but also bears traces of olive oil, serv­ing as a tan­gi­ble tes­ta­ment to the region’s olive cul­ture.

Among the esteemed voices prais­ing the qual­ity of Sabina’s olive oil is Claudio Galeno, the father of mod­ern phar­ma­col­ogy, who hailed the oil from Sabina as ​“the finest in the known world.”

Acquired by the Bertini fam­ily in 1876, the tow­er­ing olive tree reaches approx­i­mately 15 meters in height. Its majes­tic trunk boasts a cir­cum­fer­ence of 7.2 meters, while its sprawl­ing canopy spans around 30 meters in diam­e­ter. Notably, a hol­low cav­ity at the base of the trunk leads to the heart of its roots, cre­at­ing a cap­ti­vat­ing cav­ern within.

Canneto Sabino pro­duces olives of the Olivastro vari­ety, which exhibit dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter­is­tics: its ellip­tic-lance­o­late leaves and small, ovoid-shaped fruits. The result­ing oil is known for its medium fruity pro­file, infused with ele­gant veg­e­tal notes, a mild bit­ter­ness, and a har­mo­nious, aro­matic essence.

While his­tor­i­cal records indi­cate the pro­duc­tion of 12 quin­tals of olives, yield­ing 150 kilo­grams of oil, an ​“ancient mea­sure” known as ​“soma,” the cur­rent yield is com­par­a­tively lower. This dis­crep­ancy can be attrib­uted to the empha­sis on aes­thetic prun­ing rather than max­i­miz­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity.

Today, the Olive Tree of Canneto Sabino serves as a mag­nif­i­cent liv­ing legacy, a sym­bol of the Sabina region’s time­less ded­i­ca­tion to olive cul­ti­va­tion and the remark­able olive oil it pro­duces.

Standing tall, it whis­pers sto­ries of ancient tra­di­tions, entic­ing vis­i­tors to mar­vel at its grandeur and appre­ci­ate the rich her­itage it rep­re­sents.

• Sabina PDO Consortia
• European Olive Oil