APULICA / FRUIT, VEGETABLES AND PULSES
Intosso olive of Casoli
Slow Food Presidium · PAT · Fruit, vegetables and pulses · Abruzzo
In brief
- An olive variety from the foothills of the Maiella, typical above all of the Laroma plateau in Casoli. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Oliva intosso di Casoli)
- Its name comes from the need to sweeten the olives before eating; today they ferment in brine for about ten days. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Oliva intosso di Casoli)
- It also yields a single-variety oil with a green fruitiness and notes of cut grass and artichoke. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Oliva intosso di Casoli)
- Intosso olives are on Abruzzo's list of traditional products. (Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026))
History and origin
The name of this variety tells how it was eaten. Its olives had to be sweetened before they could be served: the linguist Gennaro Finamore, in his Abruzzo dictionary of 1880, describes them as ndosse olives, treated with wood-ash lye and then with clean water.
Until after the Second World War, intosso brought prosperity to the people of Casoli and of the foothills of the Majella. Later the market shrank as table olives from other Mediterranean countries took over, and much of the crop went to the mills mixed with other varieties.
The Slow Food Presidium aims to give this olive its value back and to prevent it being replaced by non-native varieties that are more productive and easier to manage. Intosso olives, also called n'dosse or brined olives, are on the list of traditional food products of Abruzzo as well.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Oliva intosso di Casoli · Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026)
Area and method of production
Intosso trees are scattered across several municipalities in the foothills of the Majella, but they are above all the mark of the Laroma plain in the municipality of Casoli: an upland of about 300 hectares above the town, with soils full of limestone gravel. Here the variety has found its ideal setting.
The tree is small, copes well with snow and cold and lives in the few centimetres of loose soil on the plateau; below 350 metres it struggles to bear fruit.
Table olives are picked from the end of September and processed with the so-called Seville method, based on lactic fermentation: they are washed several times and then left to ferment for about ten days in brine. Olives for oil are picked well into October. Undersized fruit used to go to the mill with other varieties; today a significant part of the crop becomes single-variety oil.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Oliva intosso di Casoli
How to recognise it
The intosso olive is elliptical, with a small bump at the tip, the umbo. It is medium-sized and weighs about 3 to 4 grams.
As a table olive it is recognised by its brine curing after fermentation, which sweetens the fruit, the very principle its name comes from.
The single-variety extra virgin olive oil has an intense green fruitiness, with hints of cut grass and freshly picked artichoke. On the palate it is bold, with bitterness and pungency in balance and never overpowering, and notes of green pepper, fresh walnut and sometimes tomato leaf.
On the Laroma plain the small tree lives in the few centimetres of loose soil above the limestone gravel.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Oliva intosso di Casoli
In the kitchen
Intosso has two lives in the kitchen. The first is as a table olive, the very reason for its name: a fruit that has to be sweetened, today with about ten days of fermentation in brine, before it reaches the table.
The second is the single-variety oil, which now takes a significant share of the crop: an extra virgin oil with green fruitiness and notes of artichoke, cut grass and green pepper, powerful yet balanced.
The Presidium works so that both products, the brined olives and the single-variety oil, are once again recognised by the variety's name and not mixed up with oils and olives of other origins.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Oliva intosso di Casoli
Where to taste it
The signature place is the Laroma plain above Casoli, in the province of Chieti, at the foot of the Majella: an upland of olive groves on gravelly soils. Other intosso trees grow in the neighbouring foothill municipalities.
Autumn is when the groves come alive: from late September the table olives are picked, and well into October those for oil.
Casoli and its plain fit well into a route through the Chieti hinterland and the Majella, among hill villages and farmland climbing towards the mountain.
The Presidium works with growers so that the variety is not replaced by non-native olive trees and the Laroma plain remains the landscape of intosso.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Oliva intosso di Casoli
Protection
- Slow Food Presidium — oliva-intosso (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Oliva intosso di Casoli)
- Traditional agri-food product (PAT) — Abruzzo, n. 67, 26th revision (Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026))
When
- Harvest: September–October (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Oliva intosso di Casoli)
- Autumn