Finally, un Buon Raccolto

The land around the small town of Castelmuzio is blanketed with olive groves.  Over the last four years, these groves...which produce some of the finest olive oil in the world... have had it tough.

Last year, a drought produced so few olives it cost many farmers more to get their olives pressed than the oil was worth.  One friend let the olives rot on his trees rather than lose money on his harvest.

Two of the three years before that, harvests were decimated by the olive fruit fly.

The farmers really needed a good harvest this year...and they finally got one.


There are many varieties of olive trees (from several hundred to two thousand, depending your source).  In Tuscany, two varieties predominate:


Frantoio...which you see on the right.  These trees can produce fruit for hundreds of years, and the fruit tends to yield a spicy-tasting oil, which makes it a favorite among locals.


The other variety is Leccino...whose trees are heartier but produce a less-tasty oil.

These olive trees produce a much smaller fruit than the jumbo eating olives found in American supermarkets.




One olive produces only two or three drops of oil, so it takes a whole lot of olives to make a single bottle.

That being the case, properly laying the nets around the tree is critical to ensure no olives "escape" the harvest.

For the past four years Roger has helped our friends Valerio and Tina bring in their olives.

The trees we harvested were heavily laden with fruit.  Neighbors we spoke with all said their trees were the same.




We were apparently fortunate, because news reports said the olive harvest in Tuscany was spotty...good in some places, poor in others.

Those of us without experience, pick by hand and get only the low-hanging fruit.




Just grab a branch between thumb and forefinger and pull to strip the olives off.

Olives higher up in the tree get harvested with a vibrating pitchfork...which shakes them off their branches.



The first day, we got 120 kg of olives (265 lbs).



The next, 110 kg (242 lbs).












In six days, we harvested 430 kg of olives, just short of 950 lbs.

That translated to 70 liters of oil.

Last year, the drought year, this same grove of trees produced only 6 liters.

All-in-all, un buon raccolto...a good harvest.

Unlike the oil sold in the US, Tuscan do not filter their olive oil... so it is cloudy in appearance.



That simply adds to the taste, though it may shorten the shelf-life.  However, that's not a problem because a bottle of of this extraordinary oil never lasts long enough to go bad.




In some respects, it really doesn't matter whether the olive oil is cloudy or clear.
Working outdoors on a crisp Fall afternoon and watching the sun set over Santa Anna in Comprena is reward in itself.