Get ready for a two-month journey across Italy to discover the country’s different tastes and cultivars with the newly pressed extravirgin olive oil.
The annual edition of Girolio — the “relay race” of events and festivities held by the national association Città dell’Olio (City of Oil) — will start on the 15th of October in Sicily, in the pitoresque village of Castelvetrano, and will end on the 18th of December in Trentino Alto Adige, with the tradional Christmas markets: a special route from the far South to the extreme North of the country to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy in 1861.
Seventeen legs through the several italian olive-growing regions will put together a cultural and gastronomic playbill, showing every weekend in a different location joining Città dell’Olio. The program includes culinary workshops, tastings, entertainment and meetings to promote and enhance one of the country’s most valued agricultural productions: extra virgin olive oil.
At every stage, a member of the local government will sign the special “map” of the itinerary that was designed by the artist Ro Marcenaro; he will also give as a present a tree of a traditional local cultivar that will be then planted and cared after by a school of the next stop, to promote a cultural and historical exchange between the different Italian regions.
Girolio d’Italia is a real journey throughout Italy’s traditional specialities, exploring different locations and tastes but always putting in the middle extra virgin olive oil as the main protagonist.
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