What is oleotourism?Probably many of us don't know.
I say this putting myself in the shoes of many of us, myself included, because I still have a world to discover.
Oleotourism is the communication of the agricultural and olive-growing history and therefore of a large part of Italic culture.
To practice oleotourism means to communicate these stories and this culture by placing at the center of communication the development, the past, and the present of the Italian olive-growing world, to project it into the future, in such a way as to bring as many people as possible closer to the cultural, health (if only because we are what we eat), and economic sector par excellence, that is, agriculture.
Now, many of us are probably wondering how to do it.

I ask myself more, what, as professionals, we should not do. And I have given myself, as a professional in the sector being a professional olive oil taster, an expert olive pruner, owner of a farm and holder of an oil museum, as well as a passionate consumer and scholar of the sector, this answer: we must not make communication a technical matter.We must be simple in communication, because doing agriculture means doing culture and culture must be open and available to everyone.

What do I try to do in my small way?
I offer visits to our Monti Ernici oil and olive museum, walks among the olive trees, experiential and sensory visits, tastings, communication seminars. I try to make people understand what olive groves represent for the Italian and especially Ciociarian landscape, I try to make people understand that the quality of an oil is not made with the memory of a press mill, but in a modern mill, with modern extraction techniques, with care in preserving it.

What do old oil mills or presses have more than modern mills? Besides having history on their side? Besides being the representation of two thousand or more years of olive growing?
Simple: they have shapes, materials, equipment that can be understood by everyone.
In the old mills everyone can understand that olive oil is a fruit juice.
Or do we perhaps think that we have to communicate millennia of history by showing and explaining the mechanical details of a steel box of a very modern mill with which we ourselves communicate through a tablet?

No, sir(s). Those who decide to do oleotourism must be able to explain what olive cultivation means, the relationship with our society, the relationship with the Italian landscape, with our climate, the several hundred varieties of olives that we are lucky enough to host in Italy, the oils that are extracted from them, why today certain mills, although fascinating in their shapes and the stories they tell, are no longer advisable to use in favor of new and safer extraction technologies, the relationship with cuisine, with traditional local dishes, with religion, with the customs and traditions of our over nine thousand villages.