While visiting Olio Trevi yesterday, I had the opportunity to talk to owner Angelo Guidobaldi. Confirming that olive oil, far from being a food of the common people in Italy’s past (as proponents of the so-called Mediterranean Diet would have us believe), was a symbol of luxury. Signor Guidobaldi told me that a branch of the tree was often sculpted into the stone lintel of noble houses: “We can afford olive oil to eat here,” it told the poor and illiterate.
To illustrate the point, he showed us a series of measurements for the sale of olive oil, all made in tin in the late Eighteenth or early Nineteenth centuries. Some of the smaller sizes were surprisingly small, the smallest about 50mL. “Oil was precious, and even if you could afford it, as a peasant you couldn’t afford much.” Signor Guidobaldi also suggested that Italy’s current culinary xenophobia may be the ideological descendant of Fascist policies which attempted to close the peninsula to outside cultural influences–an interesting thesis which we hope to pursue. ZN
sending...
Vineyards From Italy in the 1950s
We’ve posted other modern pictures of the remnants of the agricultural system coltura promiscua (mixed farming), a system in which a polyculture of plants combine to make a highly productive field. The following pictures (used with the kind of the Fondazione Lungarotti) are from the early post-WWII period and clearly show the persistence of the coltura promiscua, as well as traditional winemaking methods (stomping grapes with feet). For more information, see our post on the coltura promiscua and visit Lungarotti’s Museum of Wine near Perugia, where these pictures can be viewed in context with many other objects from Italy’s agricultural past. ZN
Woman harvesting grapes from vines grown around trees. With the kind permission of the Fondazione Lungarotti.
Vines draped from tree to tree. With the kind permission of the Fondazione Lungarotti.
Grain planted among trees with grape vines trained up them. With the kind permission of the Fondazione Lungarotti.