Since always cultivating lands is the thing we do best: in our family we hand down a true art which is full of all the knowledge, skills and expertise required in the processes of cultivating olives and then pressing them.
An art that has its roots in the best rural tradition, preciously preserved and transmitted, and which always aims at a continuous experimentation in the search for innovation, both in production and in cultivation.
Leonardo Visconti acquires the first olive grove, in the countryside of Torremaggiore. Thus began the olive-growing history of the Visconti family.
The witness passes into the hands of the sons: Giuseppe, Michele and Filippo. The second generation implements the company's olive-growing area.
The company growth is also due to technological innovations: the Visconti companies were among the first to introduce the pneumatic olive harvesting machine for olive harvesting.
The first olive oil bottle with its own brand is born: ``San Leonardo``, in honor of the company's founder. Two products: monovarietal of Peranzana and lemon citrus dressing.
Once in the third generation the company evolves changing its face and name: the ``Visconti, Storie di Terra`` brand is born.
The monocultivar of Peranzana is the first extra virgin ``Slow Food Presidium`` of the province of Foggia and the only one in Italy of the Daunia’s variety.
Once, a few kilometers away from the actual Torremaggiore’s city center, there was the Castlefiorentino or Florentinum’s medieval village. Founded by the Byzantines between 1018 and 1023, during the twelfth century it became part of the properties of the emperor Frederick II of Swabia who, on the 13th dicembre of the 1250, died there as he was told from his physician and astrologist Michele Scoto who said “apud portam ferream sub flore” which in Latin means “among the iron door which has a flower’s name.”
Torremaggiore’s origins also dates back to the year 1000, when the farmhouse named Terra Maggiore was part of the feud of the nearby Benedictine Abbey of Saint Peter. The bitter fights unleashed between the Papacy and Manfred of Swabia, after the death of Frederick II, led to the destruction of Fiorentino and Dragonara on October 26th, 1255. The survivors from the two cities, settling in the shadow of the Abbey of St. Peter, near the Norman-Swabian Castrum, now incorporated into the Ducal Castle, gave life to today’s old town of Torremaggiore. Over the years several noble houses followed in Torremaggiore, until the lineage De Sangro, descendants of the dukes of Burgundy, who ruled the village until 1806.
Over the centuries, the De Sangro, have deeply and visibly marked the history of this territory: it is mainly due to them that we owe the prosperity of Torremaggiore agriculture, as well as the presence, in this Alta Daunia’s area, of the Peranzana Cultivar, imported to Torremaggiore from Raimondo De Sangro, directly from the French region of Provence from which derives the dialect distortion “Peranzana”.
Michele De Sangro, the last Duke of Torremaggiore, was also the first to introduce in Apulia region, and to plant for his own use in Torremaggiore, in the Trappeto (olive mill) located in the moat of the castle, the fire mill and the presses to draw the oil.