sotto un albero: D H Lawrence under an olive tree somewhere in Italy, me under a mighty conifer in Deloraine, Tasmania. Both of us blogging, or not blogging, or imagining what it would be like to be blogging. What connects us is not writing, but the olive tree. Most of this blog will be written surrounded by olive groves.

The olive tree flourished in Sabina from very early, according to Oretta Zanini de Vita, and the cultivars that were grown then are the same ones today…”Carboncella, Leccina and Rosciola, all of them favoured by Cato, Horace, and Varro, who considered ‘the liquid gold of Sabina’ the best.” (Popes, Peasants and Shepherds trans Maureen B. Fant) The area, it is claimed, looks much the same today as it has for centuries, while the food habits trace their origins back to the Middle Ages. The twentieth century producers in Sabina were the first to receive a DOP for their olive oil.

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