Berico Euganeo Veneto DOP: a record-breaking oil

"Oil DOP from my territory, characteristics, nature and culture": it is the title of the contest just ended, which saw pupils take to the field of thirteen elementary schools, belonging to as many Italian municipalities joining the Association National Oil City. Bimboil Award, organized to promote knowledge and appreciation of extra virgin olive oil among children, has seen the podium regions of Veneto, Lazio and Molise.

Record to win the Best Oil DOP was the Veneto, thanks to features of its territory. Here, in fact, since antiquity, the olive tree represented more than a symbol of peace and humanity, also a primary source of livelihood. In particular, the cultivation of olive trees and the consequent production of olive oil is concentrated in the town of Barbarano Vicentino, near Vicenza, in the area, in all probability, of Lombard age, on immense green Venetian.

Among the hills of this small country, in fact, you can taste the Berico Euganeo Veneto DOP from particular types of land with an array of general geological sedimentary or volcanic. With features pedoclimatic of these lands, therefore, the use of pesticides is minimized and, consequently, the oil is enriched with a diverse spectrum of organoleptic properties that encourage consumption 'raw'. To make it, then, a product of excellent quality, is also in the collection: directly from the plant and mostly by hand, using combs that make the fruit fall on sheets or networks specially placed under the trees. It follows an oil so unique as tasty, green-gold, with a slightly fruity smell and taste: qualities, due both to the climate that the composition of the medium.

In the Bible, is named olive trees as one of the trees of the Promised Land. It is said, by the way, that Noah sending out a dove from his ark, which then returned with an olive branch in its beak as a sign of the end of the flood and the return to peace and harmony. Since ancient times, therefore, oil production has become almost a sense of reconciliation. A message that society in the new millennium seems more than ever need.

R.C.