9
Italian Flavors:
Sabina
History
The best evidence of the long history of olive-growing in Sabina are the olive trees.
Thousands of ancient trees sculpted by time still stand next to younger examples, preserving their production capacity and making the landscape of Sabina unique.
The appreciation of Sabina olive oil in antiquity was so great that, in his “De re rustica”, Marcus Terentius Varro included such detailed descriptions of cultivation and harvesting of olives that his treatise can be considered the first "production specifications”.
There is a variety of historical evidence from the “flask” of Poggio Sommavilla from the 7th century BC in which traces of olive oil were found, to the remains of Cures, an ancient Sabine city, with clear evidence of olive cultivation.
But the two old patriarchs are the best evidence of Sabina's glorious olive-growing history: “U' Livò” of Palombara Sabina and the “Olivone” of Canneto Sabino, two trees that are still living that were probably born when Sabina gave Rome its second King, Numa Pompilius (715 - 673 BC).
Sabine olive-growing continued to grow over the centuries, even after the fall of Rome, with the important contribution of the powerful Benedictine abbey of Farfa, in 1500 becoming the specialized agriculture that continues to day and that had a significant turning point with the establishment of the Elaiopolio Consorziale Sabino in the immediate post-war period.
In fact, it was in 1948 that the path towards the formation of a common identity and continuous product improvement was taken that the Consorzio Sabina DOP continues to follow and explore in all its activities.