Day 23 - The Olive Oil Journey

Day 23

Bari, Italy | November 16th, 2022

I had a jam-packed plan today. First producer visit in the morning, Olive Oil museum reservation at 12:30, and a 3:30 2nd producer visit. I woke up and immediately got ready for the first grove visit and mid car-ride I find out the 3:30 visit was cancelled due to a mini-COVID outbreak in the office.

The Gugliemi facility was beautiful and modern - which was awesome to see. The best part was the 45 minutes I got with Saverio Gugliemi for an interview. I really loved the conversation and got some footage of the new bottling facility. The only issue is I left the facility at 12:25 and couldn’t make it to the museum [1 hour away] in time - had to cancel.

So at this time I try impromptu visiting a mass producer who said they'd open 2 hours later (but I didn’t have it in me to wait). Instead, I decide to head back to Bari and to break my bill at the closest supermarket. But once I arrived, I figured I should buy lunch and went with some vegetables, hummus, and peas in a jar (second fiddle to frozen peas of course).

Before dinner I went to buy a wire to connect my headphones to a soundbox. Sounds simple but the previous 4 Audio stores I tried on Tuesday somehow were all closed or didn't exist. I was thankful for finally finding a true music store. However the store manager quickly told me the soundbox isn't necessary for my audio configuration - and I was most definitely not buying a new mic. I buy the headphone adapter anyway for 3 euro and head out back to the hotel to change.

I had a dinner coordinated thanks to an exchange student I met. Only issue was we signed up for different dinners, so I ended up at a restaurant alone with about 40 students for 3 hours. I was most definitely the only American and the only person at that dinner not in the exchange program - but nonetheless I was welcomed with open arms. More pizza, great conversations and new perspectives carried on until midnight, when I then went back to submit a blog post and go to sleep. I was pretty happy with the final night in Bari.

1 Olive Oil Takeaway

Something surprising to me about Puglia is the flatness of the land. After spending time in Jaen in Spain, Cartoceto in Italy, and Paso Robles in California, I always had this association of Olive Oil with hilly terrain. Puglia was surprisingly flat and not filled with vast ranges of mountains. I've grown to appreciate the grove managers in mountainous regions - it is so much more effort, time, and costly to operate in a mountainous region

-Jack

Thank you for reading and welcome to the blog! I'm traveling through Europe on a quest to find great Olive Oil.