Assisi Celebrates Olive Oil

Preparing olive oil tastes for visitors

Here in Assisi, we certainly hope that the November UNTO festival will not in any way be the final or last oil (as in “Extreme Unction”); after all, for Catholics, Extreme Unction has a finality. The final anointing for those in danger of death takes its name from the Latin, unguere (“to anoint”) – and one nearing death here in Italy is “in extremis”.

In early November, Assisi launched its first UNTO festival and at first, the name puzzled more than a few of us “locals” as it means “greasy”, “oiled” or “anointed” and “untuoso” (“oily”) can have the same negative connotations as “unctuous”: “slippery”, “greasy”, “insincerely agreeable or earnest”. Over espresso in the cafés on the main piazza, we speculated on the choice of a name like that for a festival in this gem of a medieval hilltown, albeit a festival highlighted by olive oil tastings.

Cooking classes are part of the festival

And then the posters announcing this first-ever four-day festival fêting the historical and cultural links of the typical food products of the area clarified all: UNTO is an acronym for Unesco Natura Territorio Olio. The festival intertwined various local cultural associations, the area farmers, Assisaniand visitors in a celebration of not just the prized Umbria olive oil but also its esteemed wines, truffles, prosciutti, salami and sheep’s milk cheeses. And not only gastronomical stars of Umbria took the stage, but also local handcrafts, from Assisi’s traditional embroidery to silks dyed with olive leaves, pompegranate and other vegetative colors.

As visitors wandered the stands set up in front of the 1st-century B.C. Roman temple in the main square, a tango music band enthroned on the town fountain added festive notes to the UNTO days.

Waiting for the transfer to the olive oil mill

Small shuttle buses transported visitors to the area olive mills in the Umbrian countryside to watch the pressing of the new olive oils, offered on bruschetta. Other visitors headed into the 14th-c palazzo municipalefor a cooking class highlighting Umbrian goodness.

UNTO: a celebration of “oily”….and we hope it won’t be the last!

Click here to read more about our olive oil harvest
Click here to read about olive oil celebrations in Umbria
Click here to read about the Mediterranean diet
Read about Spello’s celebration of olive oil
Read more on olive oil, “Umbria’s gold”
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Categorised in: Local foods and wines