OLIVE OIL IN SALENTO

Olive oil is one of the principal ingredients in the Mediterranean diet, both for its undiscussed organoleptic qualities and high nutritional values, and for its elevated digestibility and biological characteristics which make it innocuous for cholesterol and preferable to other types of fats. The olive interlaces its roots with the old history of Salento, because it has always found its ideal habitat in the characteristics of this heart and climate.
For this reason, for millennium the olive has given the people of Puglia its rich fruits from which the golden and thick condiment is extracted, following wise and expert methods of squeezing.
With the passing of centuries the olive-growing in Lecce has acquired more and more importance, both for the meritorious work of Byzantine monks, who recuperated spontaneous wild-olives typical of the Salento coast trough patient operations which, thanks to legislative interventions of the XVIII and XIX centuries, and after the unity of Italy have made the cultivation of olives possible, in larger and larger areas. At the moment with its 83.344 hectares, the olive-groove represents just 43,50% of the entire agricultural area in the province of Lecce and it enables on the part of 60.000 farms operating in the section and the 360 oil presses, a production of quite three and half million quintals of olives and 600.000 quintals of oil. Among the widespread varieties are "Cellina" and "Ogliarola", which represent respectively 65% and 35% of the olive production.