The Saracens introduced the oil press and the cultivation of the Cellina olive.
The majestic olive groves that populate the area today are the result of grafts made by the Basilian monks and the people who came to the Salento from the Mediterranean Sea. The economic importance assumed by olive growing for centuries is in the numbers: 3,000,000 quintals of olives and 500,000 quintals of oil. In the large quantity of oil produced there is good and less valuable, certainly the extra virgin olive oil "Terra d'Otranto" and the crops on the heights of Ugento.
Olive trees that describe the landscape are the very identity of Salento. For some years now they have been attacked by Xilella, a bacterium that removes vital lymph by leading plants to drying. Thus began a struggle against this killer who is harvesting hundreds of olive trees and changing the landscape. The European Community has ruled eradication and precluded replanting in the same areas. For those who live here and for those who have the opportunity to come, they can admire how much humanity transmits the wrinkled trunks of these fathers of Salento

Around an olive tree, many stories of lives spent in the countryside taking care of these natural monuments take shape.