Olive oil and Real Estate in Le Marche in the spring.
Working and living part time in Le Marche, Italy allows me to try out wonderful local produce and also sample the wide varieties of local olive oils. In Italy each region has it's own special types of pasta, meat and fish dishes and indeed subtle differences in pasta types are found even from village to village. This also holds true for olive oils produced in the different regions of Italy and a hot peppery Sicilian oil from the south is very different from a light soft olive oil from the Toscana region.
My work is focused on offering a first class service to clients who are either
But increasingly I have become interested in promoting the Le Marche organic olive oils of small producers in the south of the region.
I did think that I would have more time to concentrate on advertising and promoting the new business, but surprisingly I have found that interest in buying real estate in Le Marche is greater this spring than in 2008! But overall it seems that the Italian property market is weathering the credit crunch better than many other developed nations, as property debt levels were low relative to the UK and US.
Up until the Christmas period, average prices across Italy have come down slightly, by a modest 5%, as more vendors adapt their expectations to the current economic outlook. Even vendors in Le Marche are at last adjusting their valuations downward, so that the prices of homes now coming up for sale reflect the new economic situation both in Italy and the UK. Of course the 30% drop in the value of Sterling against the Euro originally had a major affect on the number of enquiries, but I think buyers are now starting to adjust their expectations to take this into account and also negotiating lower prices with vendors where possible.
Having spent a lot of my time in the Le Marche region of eastern Italy over the past 10 years and have come to know the area and people well.The region was for many years relatively unknown outside of Italy and it is split into four provinces and recently there has been the addition of the fifth province of Fermano in the south of Le Marche. I am based in the south of the region in the area near to Fermo for work, but I also have interests in central Le Marche in Senigallia and the area west of there.
In the many years that I have spent travelling to Italy I have come to appreciate the various olive oils from the different regions, whether from Sicily, Puglia, Toscana, Umbria, Liguria or Le Marche. Olive oils from Puglia and Sicily tend to be spicy and hot, while oils from Umbria, Toscana and indeed Le Marche tend to normally be more rounded and fruity. But over the last few years I have increasingly come to love the subtle flavours and the fresh pale green colour of the Le Marche oils and spend a lot of my free time outside of work tracking down small producers of high quality olive oil all over the southern Le Marche region.
I believe that the increased demand for organic olive oils from consumers in most of the worlds markets, producers all over Italy are starting to produce more organic oil to satisfy demand for locally produced high quality oils. In some cases small producers are going so far as to produce olive oils made only from a single variety of olive rather than a blend made up of many different types of olives. Blended extra virgin olive oil still makes up the majority of olive oil sold throughout the world, but hopefully in the near future very high quality mono-varietal oils will make up an increasing percentage of olive oil sold to the general public.
Over the past year have found several small producers who are keen to have their produce made available outside of the Le Marche region and indeed Italy, and am starting to import small quantities of their oils into the UK next month. The smallest producer has only two hundred olive trees, another has nearly eight hundred olive trees and the last and largest producers all have over four thousand olive trees. This year I will to be able to offer their wonderful olive oils to consumers outside of Italy and in the future I hope to find many more small growers and producers who are interested in helping me promote a wider appreciation of Le Marche olive oil in the UK and elsewhere.
