The olive tree on Lake Garda and olive oil

In the spectacular setting of Gardalake lives and fructifies the olive tree that takes its name from the lake Olivo del Garda. Lake, olive trees, cypresses and rocks offer the idea of a sort of "happy island" where the quality of what is produced locally with local fruits goes well with the majesty of the environment.  Producing oil on the steep slopes overlooking Lake Garda is no easy task and the difficulty does not appeal to all growers. It can certainly be said that the Garda lake olive tree has survived for centuries thanks to the attachment of local producers who often operate despite the meagre profits they manage to make from this crop. Olive stones were found on Lake Garda dating back to the Bronze Age, 1500-1000 BC. Tradition has it that Garda lake Extra Virgin Olive Oil is obtained by cold pressing the olives of the area, picked by hand directly from the tree. Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil fromGarda Lake is classified among the best Italian extra virgin olive oils for acidity, having the percentage of oleic acid less than 0.60%, and for the state of freshness that this oil maintains after months from the date of production due to its high chlorophyll content. These characteristics have been highlighted by specific research on extra virgin olive oils produced on the shores of Lake Garda in places such as Bardolino. Research has shown that Garda Extra Virgin Olive Oil is free of pesticide residues, "ecologically clean" as it is organoleptically excellent and valuable.
These particular organoleptic qualities are due to the climate, the soil, the combination of varieties of olives characteristic of the area and the particular care taken in their harvesting and pressing.
The organoleptic characteristics of Garda lake Extra Virgin Olive Oil are:
- colour: intense to marked golden-green, for high chlorophyll content;
- perfume: delicate, light fruitiness of varying intensity;
- absence of anomalous flavours and odours, fruity with a sensation of sweet almond;
Used cold, it has been known for centuries as the best condiment. This Extra Virgin Olive Oil is also appreciated in the kitchen for its resistance to high temperatures (220°) during cooking. Its daily use is considered a guarantee of good blood circulation, given its cholesterol-lowering power.
Garda lake Extra Virgin Olive Oil is suitable to be enriched with vegetable essences. The Extra Virgin Olive Oil of Garda lake with garlic, the Extra Virgin Olive Oil of Garda lake with basil and the Extra Virgin Olive Oil of Garda lake with chilli pepper come to life.
Countless gastronomic recipes to taste the Extra Virgin Olive Oil of Lake Garda, with or without added vegetable essences. The best ones remain those that make use of it "raw" leaving all the organoleptic qualities intact.

A combination of traditions, millenary customs, farming practices and producer techniques links the land of Lake Garda to olive growing and the production of organic extra virgin olive oil. The modern oil industry on Lake Garda is fully aware of the importance of tradition, for what it has meant and what it still means. In fact, in many ways, the techniques applied to current industrial production are identical to those of past centuries. From the knowledge of the past and a reflection on it, derives the awareness of the progress made in the quantity and quality of production, preserving the specificity of the product despite the differences in economic and social conditions, even compared to a few decades ago.
It is often believed that the production of olive oil is summed up in the mere pressing operation. This is not so, of course; at all times a series of technical choices connected with the overall structure of the economy and distribution have conditioned and condition the activity of the producers. For this reason, special attention has been paid not only to the Middle Ages, the golden age of the olive tree and Garda oil, and to 19th century evolution, but also to the dialogue between oil science and technology and farming tradition.
In the history of the Garda lake olive tree, the spread of olive-growing has known its maximum extension with the Roman Empire thanks to the introduction of new systems of storage and distribution of oil. With the fall of the Empire, olive growing had almost disappeared, also in free fall, until the Middle Ages, when Garda lake Olive Oil would be considered very rare and precious. The so-called 'Mediterranean triad' (wheat, wine, oil) meets, in the early Middle Ages, the Christianity that had assumed it at the centre of its sacraments and religious symbols. The Church thus became the main vehicle for the expansion of a food model based on a specifically agricultural production system but, initially, a non-food but mainly liturgical destination for oil.
Starting with the packaging of the sacred oils used for the sacraments (baptism, confirmation, extreme anointing and priestly ordination) and then moving on to the sacramental use, also of biblical and 'sacred' tradition, of royal and imperial anointing. This sacred and symbolic dimension is also linked to the use of oil as a medicine, which is often part of the miraculous healings narrated in various hagiographic vitae.
The ceremony of the handing over of the Chrism, on Holy Thursday, also becomes, for the rural parish churches, a sign of dependence on the bishop, and has symbolic value of belonging to the diocese and of the link with the successor of the apostles. The main destination of the olive oil, which can be felt daily at all levels, was to keep the lamps, the numerous lamps of the heavy ritual apparatus of the churches, lit. And olive oil was considered the only fuel worthy of these sacred places. Especially those who were close to the end of their earthly adventure felt the need to donate "for the sake of their soul" part of their goods, better if an olive grove, to keep the lamps of some church lit day and night; a tangible and material sign of their devotion to the church. The oil had to be present in the diet of the aristocratic classes, the most interested in the spread of Christianity from which they quickly absorbed the alimentary models.
However, it cannot be excluded that olive oil was used for food purposes even by the most humble classes, especially in areas of high production such as the pre-Alpine lakes, in particular Lake Garda, even if in the latter area its high value must have advised its marketing. It is possible that, in the early Middle Ages, 4-6 kilos of oil were worth as much as a large pig.
The cultivation of olive trees played a significant role in the economic history of the early Middle Ages, when the difficulties of long-distance transport in the Mediterranean basin attracted the attention of monasteries and bishoprics in northern Italy and beyond the Alps to the pre-Alpine lake region.
This 'Mediterranean' sub-region, creeping between the continental climates of the Alps and the Po Valley, ensured for many centuries the supply of oil to those aristocratic and ecclesiastical classes who were planning to acquire property on the spot. On Gardalake we find attestations in the ninth and tenth centuries (between 800 and 1000) the olive groves of monasteries such as the monastery of San Colombano di Bobbio in Bardolino. In the late Middle Ages, at the hands of various monastic bodies, such as the Saint Columbanus, the cultivation of the olive tree had begun to come back to life on the shores of the lake. The lake has always been associated with olive growing, "garda deputavit ad oleum", it was said in 835 in San Colombano, and it was to harvest the olives that hundreds of farmers moved from the Apennines of Piacenza to Bardolino, in the dependencies of the great abbey.
In the nineteenth century the activities of the countries on the coast were trade for civilized and wealthy people; agriculture and fishing were for the "lower" people. Manufacturing activities were non-existent and were only olive mills and cereal mills.
One could add many other ecclesiastical bodies which guaranteed donations of goods and land thanks to links established with the imperial authority which, in the present day southern and eastern Benacense territory, had vast estates. These donations contributed to making the East Garda lake one of the most important oil production areas of the early Middle Ages. As mentioned above, in the early Middle Ages, Garda lake oil was largely destined for the liturgical needs of monasteries and bishoprics in northern Italy and was exported along the waterways that connected Lake Garda with the entire Po Valley region. The main route is the one that connects the ends of the plain, Venice and Ravenna on one side and Pavia on the other, through the course of the Po river, and then continues along its major tributaries. The Garda lake stages of this route, or rather its starting points, are according to a diploma from 1014 Garda and Lazise.
The first mention of the Garda lake market, which was held in Candlemas on February 2, 1090, is the first mention of the market of Garda, which was held in Candlemas on February 2, a term in which in the following centuries the oil rents of the farms were collected: and the Garda lake market is mentioned in a document that refers to Porcile (now Belfiore), in the Veronese plain on the border with Vicenza, far from the lake. In a document dated 1182 it is the market itself that gives the name to the festival "the feast of the Madonna del Mercato di Garda", so much so that it has become important.
Medieval documents show a growing interest of landowners, both ecclesiastical and lay, in olive growing on Lake Garda. More and more often in the land lease contracts, in fact, reference is made to the obligation for growers to plant new olive trees. In Malcesine, for example, in the year 993 the tenants of the monastery of San Zeno undertake to plant twenty-four olive trees every year, to provide one man for each house for the harvest of the monastery's olives, to ensure the transport of the oil with their boat to Bardolino.
With the passage of time, the obligation for farmers to carry out days of work in favour of the ecclesiastical bodies during the olive harvest is no longer required and more space is left for the peasant initiative. Often, 'specialized' olive growing is practiced: the terms olive grove or terra cum olivis, although it is difficult to define their exact meaning, seem to indicate plots where only this plant is cultivated, and are frequent in the early Middle Ages, when many olive groves belonged to the great monasteries. In the following centuries, when the great ecclesiastical property loosens the grip, and when above all we can know how a peasant farm is made, we see that sometimes olive trees are cultivated together with vines (an inopportune combination, because the olive trees give too much shade to the vines), and also in arable fields, cultivated with cereals (also harmful, especially wheat). On the other hand, in a hilly, densely populated area, it was necessary to make a virtue out of necessity. The landscape of the lake shores, therefore, should not be very different from the present one, apart obviously from the number of houses.
In 1194 of the eighty plots of land that the monastery of San Zeno in Verona owned at Bardolino two thirds were cultivated only with olive trees, and only a quarter of the total was cultivated with vines or vegetable gardens. A few decades later, we can check the rents that were paid for these lands. Out of 73 tenants, as many as 64 corresponded to a fixed quantity of oil (while previously it was customary to pay a third or half of the olives as rent) and another 4 oil and money: almost all, in short. It is clear that the owners were increasingly interested in having oil to sell on the market, or to keep in their cellars as an escort. The examples could be multiplied: it is important, for example, to pay a rent in oil also for lawns (as will happen in Cavaion, in 1215). The economic importance of olive trees is growing. The chroniclers who accompanied Emperor Frederick I around 1158 were scandalized because German soldiers camped at Garda lake amidst beautiful olive trees and cut them to burn them and to build stables for horses; very precious olive trees, as well as pomegranates, were cut with the same carelessness that if they were willows knowing that the olive tree takes many years to be productive. In addition to those we have mentioned, other types of exclusive contracts for olive trees also spread in this area. These are pacts that provide for the separation of the property of the tree and the land immediately surrounding it (possidere olivos in aliena terra, "olive trees in other people's land", or in aliena fossa), which must be hoeed and fertilized (arbor cum sua ablaciatura, "a tree with the land that must be hoeed"; unus pes olivi cum Rapatura, "an olive tree's foot with its 'hoeing'") from the property of the agricultural land in which it is located. More or less in the same period, they begin to be from time to time remember, in the contracts, the different types of plants. We speak of olive tree raza (unus pes olivi scilicet una ruga, "a foot of olive tree of the turnip quality"), of patch, of crepe, of selivo: some of these qualities can still be found today. One is evidently aware of their characteristics, of their various adaptation to the land, of the different yield; or rather, the ecclesiastical bodies or the citizens of Verona who have these acts drawn up are aware of them, and the notaries who write them regulate themselves accordingly. They are nothing new, of course; it has always been known that olive trees are not all the same (Pliny the Elder counts 221 varieties cultivated in Italy in his time), but only now it is from the documents that something of the ancient, profound wisdom of the growers, who have always known these things, transpires. This is the same period in which the quality of the wine and the types of vine also began to be mentioned in agricultural contracts relating to the vine: signs of a change in taste, of a growing sensitivity, especially on the part of consumers in the city, for two fundamental products of Italian and Mediterranean agriculture. Not much time will pass, and the interest in agriculture will become so strong among the 'public' of the city that they will start to write again treatises on agronomic science, more and more accurate and rich in elements of practicality and concreteness.
We are witnessing the doubling of prices during the last quarter of the century: from 1 penny for each table of land (1 penny is the value of 350-450 g of oil and a pig was worth about three pennies; the table corresponds to about 27.5 square meters) in 1085 to 2 pennies per table in 1095 price which is repeated in 1100. Much lower prices on Lake Garda, remaining always under 1 money for each table: however, the price of individual olive trees is high. In 1023 three olive trees are sold for five money. The difference in price between the two areas is due to the different distance from the city: probably the land is more sought after by the city owners with easy control and transport.
The units of measurement (length, surface area, capacity) are particularly fragmented. In the Veronese territory, the measures of length (the six-foot pole, 2.04 metres long) and of surface area (the Veronese field, equal to 3,002 square metres) most used in agriculture are fairly uniform. The maximum fragmentation is found in the oil measurements. The denominations are, in the different localities, always the same: pound, baceda, galeta, brenta. The pound (probably corresponding to 0.47 liters) its multiples were precisely the baceda (9 pounds, equal to 4.29 liters), the galeta (in some cases equal to 9 bacede, but perhaps more often divided into 4 bacede, equal to about 17 liters).
It is the galeta, the measure and denomination probably most widespread in the Verona area starting from Trentino, the most uncertain and oscillating measure. There was, in fact, the baceda of Brenzone and that of Bardolino, as well as Verona. Over time, the measures adopted by the town council were to remain in force until the French Revolution and the subsequent slow affirmation of the decimal metric system, first in the accounts of ecclesiastical bodies and lay citizens and then in relations between peasants. The increasing monetization of the economy, and above all the introduction of a duty system managed by the common citizen, makes it essential to measure in order to collect a duty. Through the diffusion, and then the imposition and control (all containers must be stamped at the appropriate city office), of 'its' units of measurement, the city acquires an invisible but concrete and important power on the rural territory: the power to force people to think according to 'its' schemes. In short, the history of measures and units of measurement, also of measures for oil, is only one of a thousand faces of the progressive affirmation of Public Power, of the State.
At the end of the fifteenth century, there was a precise distinction, and in some ways surprising in our eyes, between the different qualities of olive oil produced in the Veronese territory. The most prized oil was the one produced in Valpantena and in the hills immediately north of the city, in San Maria in Stelle, on the hill of San Leonardo, in the village of San Giorgio, quite distinct from the one produced in Gardesana and from the foreign oil. Mixing them was forbidden.
The Veronese and Garda lake oil was mainly sold on the local market, especially in the city area, and it is here that the contrasts and quarrels are evident. There were many places of sale; there was no lack of Fontegì and Botege scattered throughout the city, and the itinerant oil trade within the urban area was very widespread. The fundamental role was always played by the market in Piazza Erbe: where they also tried to protect hygiene, according to the very modest standards of the time (it was necessary, for example, that the statutes forbade venditrices olei to hold their children in their arms while they stood at the counter, and to remove their head lice; or to work the wool, spinning it or putting it on the reel). In the rigid organization of the market space, the sellers of the different qualities of oil were assigned pre-established points of sale (chests, botege, sources), precisely in order to prevent fraud by ensuring maximum transparency. The sellers circumvented the rules by agreeing with the farmers, homenì and done by the villa, who filled their pumpkins with oil of lower quality and sold it at the chetichella around the square, deceiving the less careful buyers.
In any case, the town council (in which many landowners sat) was well aware of the need to maintain the quality standard of the Garda lake product. It was clear to all the councillors that olei comercium...est unum de prìncipalibus membris civitatis, "oil was one of the main resources of the city". Only for a perfect oil, Veronese notaries use the expression bonum, putchrum, nitidum et mercandareschum. Such is the oil that the tenants must correspond to the owners. An important requirement for merchantability, or rather for the oil to be mercandareschum, was clarity. It was a characteristic not taken for granted, just as it was not taken for granted, for the oil bought at the market, the absence of impurities of various kinds. The statutes of the Veronese guilds provided, since 1319, that the buyer of a quantity of oil no less than half a miaro (the miaro is a Venetian measure, equal to 477 litres; and it is significant that it is also used in Verona) has the right to be bullied and mundiltcare the oil purchased.
The transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages had been characterized by the encounter-clash between the two different models of civilization and productive-food regimes. The 'classical' one (grain-oil sheep cheese) and the 'barbaric' one (preponderance of meat and animal fats). By way of example, we can recall one of the first testimonies of the encounter between the two diets, Mediterranean and continental, and of the persistent consideration of the prerogatives of oil, a testimony given to us by Antimo, a Greek doctor who came to Italy to the court of Theodoric. He admits the use of the lard ("delizia dei Franchi") as a condiment of vegetables and other dishes, but, he specifies, ubi oleum non fuerit, "if the oil is missing"; in his opinion, furthermore, the fried lard is harmful. From this impact, the two systems both came out modified, "and indeed they ended up integrating in some way", originating in time a new situation, so to speak 'mixed', which characterized above all the territories of northern Italy. Here, documentary sources from the early Middle Ages attest on the one hand to the advance of olive growing, and on the other to the golden age of the pig, the meat animal par excellence. In the food rations distributed by the city's monasteries to the most humble workers (farm labourers, sheep farmers, threshers) olive oil appears. The first cookbooks, one from the Veneto and the other from Tuscany, appeared in Italy between the 14th and 15th centuries; they were produced in a city environment and were intended for the cooks of the lords or of the rich bourgeoisie, and were aimed at a socially elevated public, as demonstrated by the recipes, elaborate and rich in ingredients, even expensive ones. The Veronese Antonio Carlotti, an oil producer from Garda, wrote that "although for many cooking preparations oil can be replaced by butter, here divided into plebs discemit (which distinguishes the rich from the people)", oil remains an indispensable element for those condiments "which can only be made well with it".
In Bartolomeo Platina's famous treatise, The Honest Pleasure and Good Health, in which culinary art, dietetics and food hygiene are combined, vegetables and salads are widely discussed. At the beginning of the meal, lettuce and "all that can be taken raw and cooked to be seasoned with oil and vinegar" and of course with salt: they "move" the stomach and give a light and measured nourishment. Among the recipes of the seventeenth century by Bartolomeo Stefani, cook of the Duke of Mantua, there is a cappuccino salad under the embers, which seems to be the sister of barbecued radicchio trevisano, having to be greased with leaf by leaf oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper. Salt and oil, sometimes with the addition of pepper and aromatic herbs, were particularly suitable for seasoning boiled vegetables, cooked under the ashes or in grills, or cut into small pieces for sautéed vegetables. Finally, oil also appears more and more often in the seasoning of broad beans, the consumption of which was once very considerable. Fully grasping the spirit of classical medicine, the Middle Ages resumed and developed the fundamental concept that health is preserved or recovered through the correct use of food: dietetics is therefore an essential part of medical literature, alongside works on the virtues of herbs and animals.
Of ancient derivation is also the distinction between onfacino oil, that is obtained from immature olives, and the one squeezed from ripe olives; between the two the preference is usually accorded to the first one, light, of better taste, good for the stomach and gums; the mature one, very fat (hence the advice to add salt) and tasty, has the power "to soften the belly and kill worms", and is considered more useful in the packaging of medicines. From a properly therapeutic point of view, oil was recognised as having numerous other properties: "extraordinarily effective" against intense cold, it tones the body, lubricates the intestine, soothes burns and burns; taken with hot water, it is also attributed the power to fight toxic foods and poisons. All undoubted indications of its preciousness. In pharmaceutical practice (also in the veterinary field), olive oil often appears as a component, binder or excipient for such simple medicines as altered by flowers, herb, roots and gums, and other drugs, or based on animal products and organs. It is sufficient to remember a famous contravener, the scorpion oil, which popular medicine will continue to propose as a remedy for animal bites. As far as cosmetics are concerned, soaps and ointments based on oil, and perfumed oils for body, beard and hair care are widespread. From the wood of the Garda lake olive trees, a great quantity of hair combs and beard combs were made, so that many, as far away as near provinces, are supplied.
With the Renaissance, olive oil consumption still slowly and constantly flourished thanks, once again, to an important technological introduction: the application of hydraulic force to mills in place of millstones, at the time operated by arms or with the help of animals.
A document from the year 1519 shows that oil was an important part of the economy. It reviews various countries on the eastern shore of the lake and here are a few examples:
• Malcesine: harvested 332 brente and 8 bacede;
• Torri del Benaco: harvested 510 brente and 14 bacede;
• Garda: harvested 199 brente and 3 bacede;
• Bardolino: harvested 390 brente and 8 bacede;
In total there are 1431 brente and 33 bacede. The brenta was equal to 68.68 litres; while one baceda was equal to 4.29 litres. Also the oIio market, taking into account the irregularity of production due to climatic factors and transport costs, will have a marked commercial fate. The olive tree of very ancient tradition, as we have seen, has played a decisive role in the economy of many areas; the quality of the oil of Garda has always been of excellent level thanks to the factors that have contributed such as the climate, the soil and the limited attacks of oil fly. This also explains why the olive oil of Garda enjoys an active market and a slightly higher price than the national average. In the 1950s there was a considerable availability of manpower, which encouraged the spread of olive growing but also allowed cultivation to extend to areas at the limit of the species' adaptability, in poorly arranged soils where modern olive growing has found many obstacles to establish itself. Towards the end of the 1980s, after years of stagnation and uncertainty the turning point, the rediscovery of the quality that makes the difference between the best olive oil and other fats, favoured an increase in demand from the market.

Related Topics : Olive harvest and new oil on Lake Garda - Monastery of San Colombano - Olive tree on Lake Garda - Fragments of the history of Garda lake extra virgin olive oil