Extra-virgin olive oil
Salento gold
Olive cultivation is one of the oldest farming activities in the Salento. So much so that even today, it takes up around 40% of the overall surface area of farmland and forests on the peninsular. Just as old are the techniques used to harvest the fruit of these trees. Olives are one of the most authentic foods, and one of those most precious for our health. Their oil is now universally acknowledged as a condiment suitable for all ages, for its digestibility and intrinsic health-giving properties.
There are many festivals dedicated to olives, including that of the “volìa cazzata” in Martano, which is held in October.
Salentine olives
Two native varieties, to guarantee flavour and goodness
The Salento has two olive cultivars that are considered autochthonous: the Cellina di Nardò, and the Ogliarola di Lecce.
The first gives a straw-yellow coloured oil, with an intense scent and bitter, fruity flavour, which make it very distinctive. Cellina di Nardò trees yield abundant harvests each year and are very robust.
The Ogliarola di Lecce, on the other hand, is less prolific and less suitable for producing oil; it is generally used to blend with other olive oils. Its fruits, however, are appreciated in country cooking and have long been used in various ways which have now been rediscovered and brought to light.
Trappeti or underground oil mills
The ancient sites of oil production
In the 16th century, oil was mainly produced in a trappeto, from the Latin word for oil mill. These were underground spaces (hypogeums) divided into different rooms – storeroom, work rooms, kitchen, dormitory and stable. For five or six months a year they bustled with the hard work of pressing and oil production. The olives were pressed in a first 70 cm high vat, with stone wheels that were almost 2 m high. They were then placed into a second tub with a press, for a second pressing which separated the sediment from the waste material.
The trappeti were not easy to see from the outside, and that is why many of them have been lost over the centuries. Those which survived can now be visited on tours set up by local authorities or farms, on which you can also learn about the production cycles and the history of this millennia-old activity.
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