Harvesting olives to make olive oil is an ancient Italian ritual that's increasingly under threat. Now, some believe it might just be the next frontier of Italian tourism.
Rubber boots squelching in the mud, I squint up at a mosaic of branches and scan the leaves. I've been at this for hours; my eyes blur. But there, at the top of the tree is one last cluster of purply-green olives.
I raise the handle of my rake – 2.5m long and unwieldy, like the neck of a giraffe. As a splinter pierces my glove, I strike; ripping through the branch with the comb's long teeth. Olives shower down in a green and purple rain.
I glance triumphantly at my husband and mother-in-law. They're too busy combing their own trees to notice.
An Italian autumnal rite
Each October, after the beach umbrellas have folded and the air turns crisp, my husband and I retreat to his parents' orchard in Calabria to participate in one of Italy's most delicious autumnal traditions: the olive harvest.
We're not alone; la raccolta delle olive is an ancient ritual across rural Italy, where olive trees have been cultivated for thousands of years and many families still tend generational oliveti (olive groves) to produce the oil they will use in the coming year. No heavy machinery; very few (if any) chemicals; just artisanal extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) that we'll drizzle over everything from soups to salad.
Between mid-October and early December, from Sicily to Lake Garda, the raccolta pervades daily life. Weekends are spent harvesting and transporting olives to the local frantoio (olive mill), where they'll be pressed into oil, then bottled and stashed in the pantry until needed. For weeks, we pick leaves from our hair, scrub olive pulp from our nails and wrap warm towels around our necks; stiff from peering up into the branches.
The work is exhilarating – and it might just be the next frontier of Italian tourism.
In the last few years, oleoturismo (olive oil tourism) has been on the rise in Italy. A growing number of olive farmers have expanded their ancestral groves or bought hectares of abandoned trees to cater to tourists. Some are opening agritourisms, while others are offering tastings or experiences where guests can stroll through the groves and even participate in the harvest itself.
What is mere housekeeping for my in-laws and friends is becoming a coveted experience for international travellers and Italians longing to return to tradition.
"When I was a child, we all did the harvest together," recalls Adriana Calvaruso, customer liaison for Quartus olive oil farm in Alcamo, Sicily; an offshoot of her grandparents' grove. "It was a moment of sharing, of celebration. All our generations, united by this passion. In the evening, when you smell the olives you've harvested with your own hands, it's like inhaling the scent of home."
Quartus, which Calvaruso operates alongside her parents, transmits that generational love with bespoke olive grove experiences, welcoming visitors to watch their more than 1,300 trees being harvested each October: "The process is as manual as possible, not using industrial machinery that stresses the trees. In the evening, we visit the mill to see the pressing."
A tasting naturally follows, "either on the farm, where the harvest takes place, or at the mill". The bold flavour of EVOO is sampled in oil "flights", savoured like a nice Chianti to access the olives' myriad flavours.
Some properties even allow visitors to pick up a rake themselves; a return to nature increasingly less common in modern Italy, says Christian Reggioli of the Bio Agriturismo Reggioli in Monteluco, Tuscany.
Originally from Italy's northern Alps, Reggioli fell in love with the countryside tradition as a young man. "For me, it's about a return to the land," he says. "I grew up in a touristy village where it snowed half the year, so agriculture was somewhat lost there. I wanted to reconnect with nature more directly, through this lifestyle."
At the farm, Reggioli says: "People help pick and press the olives to make their own oil for the whole year. Some guests stay for a week or two, or even for a month… In the morning, we all have breakfast together, then go to the fields. People form groups of three or four per tree, lay nets underneath, then start collecting."
Like wine, olive oil's taste is dependent on the varietal, soil and weather conditions. "Real oil is different every time," says Reggioli. "We bring olives to the press every few days; each time, something new comes out. A new adventure, a new flavour, a new colour."
Case in point: my in-laws' Calabrian olives grow inland on a rocky plain, but six hours north in Terracina where my husband and I live, our friend's trees grow in the mountains overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. One night after the harvest, we invite her to dinner, planning to swap our new EVOO. Our menu is Italian autumn on a plate: risotto alla zucca (pumpkin risotto) and roast chestnuts. Her oil – audaciously peppery and bright – is a stark contrast to our mild, floral offering.
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"Our guests love learning how to recognise real EVOO," says Lucia Leone, oil sommelier at Masseria il Frantoio in Ostuni, Puglia; a 16th-Century luxury farmhouse offering a variety of olive oil experiences. "Real EVOO is fruity, fresh, bitter and spicy. If you don't taste those notes of tomato leaf, fresh-cut herbs or artichokes, the oil isn't extra virgin."
Monica Bisignano Zamler runs food and lifestyle tours in Italy, including a harvest experience where travellers can try their hand at collecting olives. "Tourists who've travelled to Italy before have seen the monuments; they've seen the Coliseum, they've been to Venice," she says. "Now people are looking for more experiential travel in foreign countries; they're really starting to recognise that it's important to see how other cultures live and what their day-to-day lives are all about."
An endangered tradition
La raccolta may be part of everyday life in rural Italy, but as Italians continue to migrate to larger cities for economic opportunities, hundreds of thousands of family groves have been abandoned in recent decades. Throughout urban Italy, industrialised mass olive oil production reigns; three in four bottles of olive oils purchased in Italy now come from overseas.
"The tradition is being lost because there isn't an appreciation for it," says Reggioli. "Until 30 years ago, even Tuscan families who didn't own groves would buy 50 litres of oil directly from farmers. Mothers aren't at home cooking anymore. People now live in small apartments, without large pantries to store many bottles."
But as so often in Italy, tourism could be the answer.
Like cheese, EVOO is emerging as a strategic part of Italy's "Made in Italy" identity – a product that embodies craftsmanship, heritage and export potential. The country is home to approximately 400,000 active olive-growing businesses, 250 million trees and 533 native varieties, resulting in the world's richest olive biodiversity. Recognising the economic and cultural value of olive oil tourism, the Italian government included the sector in the national budget in 2020. Since then, Italy's food and wine tourism has seen a 37.1% boom, which industry sources say are "closely tied" to the growth of olive oil tourism.
