Olio Officina Festival in Milan. Here we are. From Thursday 2 to Saturday 4 February, a gathering of people and content with a maximum common denominator: extra virgin olive oil. Milan, the economic capital. In a prestige location, a green lung with a congress centre like the Palazzo delle Stelline. Just a few metres from Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper in the Santa Maria delle Grazie church. And Leonardo would have liked this event. Because they will be a very busy three-day happening with an uninterrupted, experimental series of meetings and dialogue, attendance and participation. The keyword is “energy”. Energy for olive happens through food, wellbeing, meditation, and personal and psychological growth. Different dimensions of olive oil, therefore. The creativity of the event’s organiser, Luigi Caricato, knows no bounds. He is one of Italy’s leading oil experts. A fighter and a person with a broad mind. The DOP Riviera Ligure oil protection consortium will also be taking part, its energy represented by Francesco Bruzzo, former president of the protection consortium, an expert taster, panel leader, and an “oil gentleman”. He will be talking at 12.30 pm on Saturday 4, in the Sala Leonardo together with Laura Turri, vice president of the Garda DOP oil protection consortium. The title of his speech is a programme, a manifesto in itself: The elegance of oil. Because consumers prefer mild extra virgin oils. So loved and so derided, so-called “mild” oils due to a lesser perception of their bitter, spicy notes, are met with contradictory reactions. Consumers love them, experts reject them, wrongly. An occasion for dialogue in defence of mild extra virgin olive oils. Francesco Bruzzo will also guide the tasting session on Saturday 4 at 4.00 pm. Here again a programme: The mildness of oil in practical terms. DOP Riviera Ligure extra virgin olive oil. Words and guided tasting for a selection of mild, delicate extra virgin olive oils, with slight bitter, spicy notes. How to use them in the kitchen, in raw and cooked dishes, with instructions. And that’s not all! There will be other guided tasting sessions of DOP Riviera Ligure oil. The consortium stand will see the presence of member companies: Cristina Armato and Elena Donzella for Popolin. Plus Agostino Sommariva, another consortium member invited to a discussion that looks at extra virgin olive oil in terms of past, present and future, tradition and innovation.
