Harvesting olives to make olive oil is an ancient Italian ritual that's increasingly under threat. Now, some believe it might just be the next frontier of Italian tourism.

Rubber boots squelching in the mud, I squint up at a mosaic of branches and scan the leaves. I've been at this for hours; my eyes blur. But there, at the top of the tree is one last cluster of purply-green olives.

I raise the handle of my rake – 2.5m long and unwieldy, like the neck of a giraffe. As a splinter pierces my glove, I strike; ripping through the branch with the comb's long teeth. Olives shower down in a green and purple rain.

I glance triumphantly at my husband and mother-in-law. They're too busy combing their own trees to notice.

Each October, after the beach umbrellas have folded and the air turns crisp, my husband and I retreat to his parents' orchard in Calabria to participate in one of Italy's most delicious autumnal traditions: the olive harvest.

We're not alone; la raccolta delle olive is an ancient ritual across rural Italy, where olive trees have been cultivated for thousands of years and many families still tend generational oliveti (olive groves) to produce the oil they will use in the coming year. No heavy machinery; very few (if any) chemicals; just artisanal extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) that we'll drizzle over everything from soups to salad.

Between mid-October and early December, from Sicily to Lake Garda, the raccolta pervades daily life. Weekends are spent harvesting and transporting olives to the local frantoio (olive mill), where they'll be pressed into oil, then bottled and stashed in the pantry until needed. For weeks, we pick leaves from our hair, scrub olive pulp from our nails and wrap warm towels around our necks; stiff from peering up into the branches.

The work is exhilarating – and it might just be the next frontier of Italian tourism.

In the last few years, oleoturismo (olive oil tourism) has been on the rise in Italy. A growing number of olive farmers have expanded their ancestral groves or bought hectares of abandoned trees to cater to tourists. Some are opening agritourisms, while others are offering tastings or experiences where guests can stroll through the groves and even participate in the harvest itself.

What is mere housekeeping for my in-laws and friends is becoming a coveted experience for international travellers and Italians longing to return to tradition.

"When I was a child, we all did the harvest together," recalls Adriana Calvaruso, customer liaison for Quartus olive oil farm in Alcamo, Sicily; an offshoot of her grandparents' grove. "It was a moment of sharing, of celebration. All our generations, united by this passion. In the evening, when you smell the olives you've harvested with your own hands, it's like inhaling the scent of home."

Quartus, which Calvaruso operates alongside her parents, transmits that generational love with bespoke olive grove experiences, welcoming visitors to watch their more than 1,300 trees being harvested each October: "The process is as manual as possible, not using industrial machinery that stresses the trees. In the evening, we visit the mill to see the pressing."

A tasting naturally follows, "either on the farm, where the harvest takes place, or at the mill". The bold flavour of EVOO is sampled in oil "flights", savoured like a nice Chianti to access the olives' myriad flavours.

Some properties even allow visitors to pick up a rake themselves; a return to nature increasingly less common in modern Italy, says Christian Reggioli of the Bio Agriturismo Reggioli in Monteluco, Tuscany.

Originally from Italy's northern Alps, Reggioli fell in love with the countryside tradition as a young man. "For me, it's about a return to the land," he says. "I grew up in a touristy village where it snowed half the year, so agriculture was somewhat lost there. I wanted to reconnect with nature more directly, through this lifestyle."

At the farm, Reggioli says: "People help pick and press the olives to make their own oil for the whole year. Some guests stay for a week or two, or even for a month… In the morning, we all have breakfast together,........

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