25 years of “Frantoi Aperti”, forerunner in oil tourism

With the greeting of president of the Umbria Region, Donatella Tesei, and in the presence of the mayors of the oil cities and numerous operators, the celebration ceremony of the 25 years di “Open Mills”.
It was the story of the evolution of this quarter of a century Paolo Softoni, president of the Umbria DOP Evo Oil Road who recalled how regional olive growing has changed. At the birth of Frantoi Aperti, he recalled, "there was no DOP, the harvest began at the end of November, the olives were placed in jute bags, still in many mills there were large millstones to mark the processing times and the oil was often taken in bulk, in containers that were often improvised. In those years, in that incubator of ideas which was the Agribusiness Center of Umbria, the embryo of Frantoi Aperti as we know it today was born. Opening oil mills in those years seemed like a heresy: places often unprepared to welcome visitors, factories without frills, gray and impregnated with the acrid smells of sludge, designed only for extracting and storing oil.
At the beginning Frantoi Aperti was all concentrated in a single weekend in November which then became a month of events from 2009, an entire month in autumn in which the spotlights are on the entire regional territory. 25 years are a considerable milestone for Frantoi Aperti in Umbria - continuedSoftoni - an event that not only paved the way for the first experiences of oil tourism at a national level, but which was a real incubator of formats that consolidated over time, which have made the contamination of languages ​​and arts a model that has somewhat revolutionized the idea of ​​events dedicated to oil. Not just moments of folklore and tasting confined to the local area, but a real cultural container that promotes Umbria's oil as a whole, accompanying the evolution of businesses and territories with highly innovative communication”.
The celebration ceremony of the 25 years of Frantoi Aperti in Umbria was also the occasion to launch the new appointment, created by the Associazione Strada dell'Olio evo Dop Umbria, of “The Great Ride” along the olive belt Assisi-Spoleto, a traveling event for two wheels, which will be organized for 2023.