The olive oil of today’s province of Imperia
The olive oil of today’s province of Imperia has historically been treated by most with different names, but which meant the same cultivar: Taggiasca.
Among the most ancient statutes concerning the olive-growing activities of the Ligurian west we find that of Diano Castello of 1363 with a special chapter dedicated to “De Gombis olei“, where good neighborly relations were established and the mutual servitude of the “pendane” was introduced, the which allowed the harvest of the fruit fallen into the neighbor’s land. The interesting thing is that the olives fallen to the bottom of others remain the owner of the plant, unlike what happens in other tree crops. These uses and customs have been handed down to the present day.
The valleys of the Imperia area
In 1500 we find the humanist Agostino Giustiniani who meticulously described the Ligurian territory and in particular the valleys of the Imperia area: “the fertile and pleasant valley of Oneglia abounding in oil and other fruits”, the Maro valley “fertile and abounding in wine , oil and fruit; the valley of Diano famous for the goodness and quantity of oil, which is born in that abundance, so that many vintimillia gionge e vintimillia barrili “and again” the well-populated Arocia valley abounding in wine, oil, wheat, and other fruits “.
The fame of the oil produced by Taggiasche olives was very great.
In a report of 1615 drawn up by Gerardo Basso on behalf of the Spanish authorities in Milan, we read: “[…] this valley (Imperia) produces that perfect pride that is well known throughout Italy”
The frost of 1709
An event that caused serious damage to the agriculture of the territory but with positive implications was the frost of 1709.
The historian Gianni De Moro, in his book “Porto Maurizio nel ‘700” recalls that the “olive groves of Provence suffered much greater damage” than ours and consequently the French traders directed “all their huge purchases to the Ligurian Riviera”. From that year on, the Taggiasca olive reached a fame that would soon become worldwide.
To understand the importance that the Taggiasco olive tree has for our territory, it is enough to remember that at the end of the 1700s, General Claude-Victor Perrin threatened to cut all the olive trees in the event of social unrest
Jurisdiction of olive trees
Charles-Louis de Montesquieu in his “Journey to Italy” described the Ligurian Riviera thus “The Genoese lands are the worst in the world. But in those barren mountains, in some places, olive trees grow in abundance, which supply France with a good quantity of oil. That of the Riviera di Ponente is better than that of the Riviera di Levante. ”
In the Napoleonic period, the Imperia olive oil trade reached significant weight, so much so that this part of the region was called the “Jurisdiction of olive trees“.
In 1808 the mayor of Porto Maurizio (now Imperia) wrote as follows: “The main and unique resource of the town consists in the trade and sale of oil. It often happens that a very important quantity of this liquid is embarked on vessels anchored on the shore and it can be said that it is on these vessels that the fortune and the entire wealth of the country rests ”.
The Peace of Aachen
Giovanni Maria Piccone wrote in his “Essays on the oil economy” of 1808 that the massive spread of olive growing in Liguria is to be attributed to the period following the Peace of Aachen (1748).
“Three decades of rest, which succeeded the peace of Aachen, having made the southern European productions familiar to the north of Europe, raised the price of oil among us, which before this period was usually from 30 to 50 lire per barrel . (…) The scarce collections of the past years and the closure of the Levant to navigation have made it jump from 150 to 200 and more.
It is nevertheless certain that the oil product of Liguria has doubled in the course of a century, not only because of the new plantations, which took over from the woods and vines, but still thanks to the prufusion of its fertilizers, with which the Lower West has argued to multiply the fertility of its olive groves.
The complete vintages over the eighteen or twenty thousand barrels of the Diano area that made Giustiniani’s wonders are no longer evaluated; but on the basis of the two hundred thousand, of which only the valleys of Porto Maurizio and Oneglia are capable. (…) the olive tree has penetrated the entire length of the coast: it has advanced and continues however towards the Apennines: the cereal plants, the wild ones and the viniferae go from hand to hand, giving up their stay: finally it it would have already invaded without reserve the whole mountainous part of Liguria; if the climate with its rigors did not oppose him from time to time with a bronze barrier. “
Gaspard Chabrol de Volvic
The prefect of the department of Montenotte, Gaspard Chabrol de Volvic in 1809, sent to Paris a “Memoir on the bays, ports and beaches of the Department”.
The Imperia belonged to this department and he remembers it verbatim: “[…] This coast is extremely important. There is a strong and active trade, extremely precious. This trade takes place in peacetime as in wartime because it leverages on the country’s production alone, that oil which provides the inhabitants with the means of exchange to buy the grains necessary for their usual consumption. ”
The same prefect in 1824 will publish statistics on the department of Montenotte, which will correspond to today’s provinces of Savona, Alessandria, Imperia and Cuneo.
Regarding the province of Imperia and Savona, he wrote as follows: “Now there is no more, from Alassio to Taggia which marks the border of the department, a single hill that is not adorned with olive trees”. […] “The olive trees retain all their strength and present their ever-green peaks to the enchanted eyes of travelers. The only treasure of the rocks that border Italy, the olive tree is like the golden branch from which the fortune of the inhabitants of these arid places flows. “
The King of olives
Giorgio Gallesio, illustrious botanist, published from 1817 a treatise dedicated to the main Italian fruit trees, where inside a precise picture of the variety of olive tree called in Liguria Taggiasca or Lavagnina, in Tuscany Ulivo Gentile is drawn, considered “the King of olives “.
“The territory of Nice is the land of the Ulivo Gentile. Many varieties are mixed with this in the territory of Monaco and in that of Menton, but it returns to become exclusive in that of Ventimiglia: there the Gentile olive tree begins to take the name of Tagliasca or Taggiasca, a name that it retains throughout the western coast of Liguria and which seems to have to repeat itself from the city of Taggia, near which ancient plants can be seen, and where cultivation for the Genoese may have begun.
The dominion of the Taggiasca continues almost unrivaled up to the Andora valley, and makes the oils of Ventimiglia, Taggia, San Remo, Porto Maurizio, Oneglia and Diano famous. On Andora the Tagliasca begins to find itself mixed with the Colombare, which continue almost as far as Noli (…) But as soon as it passes the Capo di Portofino, the Olivo Gentile regains its dominance and becomes almost exclusive in the beautiful hills of Chiavari and in those of Lavagna , a country that gives it its name.”
Imperia
Even the historian Giuseppe Maria Pira recounted in his book History of the city and principality of Oneglia by the indigenous inhabitants until 1834, published posthumously, the economic dynamics of Imperia (of which Oneglia is a part): “[…] while they were there enterprising and active shopkeepers and carriers who, in spite of steep roads, maintained direct traffic with Piedmont, transporting the country’s oil. ”
“[…] The olives of the principality of Oneglia, by judgment of a good judge, are the most abundant in oil and give it even more delicate. These are a little elongated, moderately voluminous, larger at the base than at the stem, much shorter than the carnelian, known among us as tagliasce, a quality properly called olea fructu oblongo minor. Since this liquid has become the main product and the only export item abroad … ”
“[…] The oil of the Principality of Oneglia is loaded for France, the Netherlands, Holland and England. The fame of this trade is published by Martiniere, Baudrand, Pronti, Busching, natural histories and all geographical dictionaries. Count De Chabrol was pleased to point out that the oil of Oneglia like that of Diano is known in Europe under the name of Porto Maurizio oil ”
“[…] The cultivation of olive trees, which in the previous century had an annual production of thirty thousand barrels of oil (24,000 quintals), had grown by a third, and the price of this precious liquid had also increased as well, which being free export was charged especially for France, England, Holland, and the Netherlands
“[…] Oneglia was then beginning his golden age. The oil trade mainly began to flourish again. Located in the middle of a neighboring area equally planted with olive trees, this competition had made him lose all his foreign commissions in his serious vicissitudes. The shopkeepers of Porto Maurizio took advantage of this to make themselves known in France and in the North, where they almost achieved the exclusivity of the oil trade by commission. The prejudice of the inferiority of these same oils that they had established among foreigners, made that no one dared to ask Oneglia directly. There the price was available and there was reduced to resorting to the principality of Oneglia to trade its product. (…) The inhabitants of Oneglia themselves resumed the ancient maritime traffic, importing goods with their own ships. ”
“[…] Such a flourishing traffic, although exercised in part by French and Genevan foreign houses that came to settle here, did not cease to turn to the main utility of the inhabitants who own the territory. Therefore, the vineyards and the sown fields that once provided wine for the needs, and provisions for four months of the year were abandoned ”
“[…] The problem still remains to be resolved whether it was a real advantage to have abandoned the cultivation of cereals and vines to afforest the land that was so well distributed behind with olive trees. […] The increase in oil was such a powerful prestige, that all of furious momentum began to vary the cultivation system held by our ancients, so prudently jealous of keeping the land landed in vineyards, arable and olive groves.
“[…] In the past fifty years alone, the olive tree was studied with so much activity that up to 250 thousand were planted. The lack of the ancient productions of wine and provisions forced to buy the albinatas too, which had also grown in price. They enjoyed all the comforts and pleasures of civilization, and it was believed that everything could be made up for by the single product of oil. (…) It was not calculated that the harvest was biennial; indeed subject to failures due to drought, frost and maximum due to the scourge of a particular worm called a miner caterpillar, which attacks the olive skin in August and then devours the pulp […] ”
“[…] From 1788 to 1807 there were two full harvests, five mediocre, eight bad and five null”
“[…] Finally the increase in the price of oil infatuated us; we believed we had become rich, we committed ourselves to getting out of rusticity to enter by force into the great world of civilization. Each placed three fatal burdens on their olive grove: ambition, gluttony, and softness that impoverish us for the benefit of abroad, from which we let ourselves absorb the money. Let’s think again, our ancients, although large in customs and rude manners, were wiser and more virtuous than us. “
Trade in the province of Imperia
Goffredo Casalis, in his historical statistical commercial geographical dictionary of the states of s. m. the king of Sardinia in 1843 reports the trade in the province of Imperia as follows: “[…] The only active trade that is done with abroad and in the interior is that of oil […] Annually 35,000 metric tons are transported to France : no less than 2,500 quintals are transported to Turin ”
In the “Description of Genoa and Genovesato” by various authors of 1846 the western Ligurian Riviera is described in this way: “some provinces are almost devoid of manufacturing (thus the Riviera di Ponente beyond Savona) and subsidized by their main goods, oil, they extract the merchandise and most of the necessary provisions from the neighboring provinces or from abroad ”.
[…] Ripe olive contains just under ¼ of its weight in oil. The method of doing this, followed in the provinces which give the most esteem, that is, in Oneglia, Diano, Taggia, Porto Maurizio etc., is not at all similar to that practiced in the others; the goodness of the oil of the first ones is attributed both to the manufacturing method and to the quality of the plant, to the care of reaming and choosing the olives before pressing them, to remove the dry leaves, the stones, the dust etc .; not to go to the press with the choices those still wet with rain, or remained for a long time on the ground, etc., and especially a far away the oil in piles as is customary in Sardinia, in Spain, in Sicily, in Barberia. ”
In the monograph published in 1934 by Vincenzo Guido Donte, Giovanni Garibbo, Paolo Stacchini, the diffusion and penetration of oil from the province of Imperia was already praised: “[…] To enumerate the foreign countries it reaches from Imperia the ‘olive oil all the names of the atlas should be copied […] “
Taggiasco oil
Even a more recent historian like Lucetto Ramella, wanted to remember the Taggiasco oil and did so with his 1986 book “The olive tree in the Ligurian west“: “Our oil was also tempting for Barbary pirates from North Africa, who made landings, followed by rapid inland raids, equipped with skins, in which they put the looted oil. To go without fail, they let themselves be guided by renegades, local men kidnapped on previous excursions, who collaborated for convenience or because they were forced. ”
The Albenganian agronomist Emanuele Della Valle, published in 1950 his “Economic considerations on olive cultivation in Liguria”. The olive tree took root in Liguria, uprooting all other crops since there was undoubtedly a high income produced by this activity; however, the monoculture of the olive tree contained within itself the seeds of the future crisis, dating back to the second half of the nineteenth century. Della Valle explains to us that due to the increase in the price of the working day, and the consequent decrease in the selling price of oil, the income becomes zero and the olive grove becomes passive and remains so until 1914.
“They transformed the already olive grove into a vineyard or something else, and many also those who, having sold the wood, abandoned it, to look for work elsewhere, perhaps remaining farmers and renting land in the plains. Others found themselves in a position to be able to carry water into their land and transformed it into an orchard if that was abundant, if it was scarce, into an artichoke or apricot grove. Still others, in the more suitable climates, cut down the olive trees and turned to floriculture. And indeed it can be said that it was precisely the acuteness of the oil crisis that gave rise to a happy innovation of cultures in several countries of the Riviera, bringing previously unexpected well-being. “
The promised land of the olive tree
To conclude the series of historical texts that described the olive tree and the condition of extreme discomfort that the Ligurian olive-growing Riviera experienced in the early 1900s, we find the description of Senator Giovanni Celesia di Vegliasco: “There is the entire province of Imperia tormented by the terrible crisis olive growing: countries and regions that for twenty years have seen the very source of their life and well-being disappear. The drought, the oil fly, the phleotrips have destroyed those means of production […] The tenacious secular work of the Ligurians, alternately sailors and farmers who transformed the sterile, stony slopes of the mountains into fertile terraces or bands, making over the centuries a monument of civilization and work […] is by now unused and the characters of abandonment and destruction are beginning to manifest themselves. […] The Lower West, the promised land of the olive tree, has lost all productive power. […] The owners discouraged, disappointed, do not have or do not give the land the necessary capital.
