Do you know how you get from the olives on the branches to the oil you have on your table? I would like to explain the method I have been following for years to produce a truly exceptional extra virgin olive oil.
I started producing extra virgin olive oil when I inherited an olive grove from my father, who was also a doctor and had in turn increased the estate inherited from my grandfather, planting new olive trees that were already ripe for fruit production. As I began to learn more about this world, I became so passionate about it that I dedicated most of my free time to this activity.
Driven by the desire to produce a genuine oil with a sincere taste, initially for the consumption of my family and a few friends, I chose to adopt a system dictated above all by common sense, maximum fussiness and an exaggerated critical sense, to strive for the best without ever being satisfied. In respect of tradition, I have always kept a watchful eye on modernity in all the occasions in which it allows us to overcome taboos and counterproductive legacies of the past, as can often happen in the peasant world. I have chosen, therefore, to use wild grass chopped up with the shredder as fertilizer and to prune the plants “the old fashioned way”, with scissors, amethod that leads to knowing the plants one by one, just like with my patients, although considered by most to be very expensive and, as such, in danger of extinction. The alternative would have been, in fact, the mechanical method, which consists of planting the trees close to each other and then, at the time of pruning, pruning them with a tool equipped with an enormous circular saw that cuts all the planned branches; in this way, however, after about twenty years, the olive grove must be regenerated, just like it happens with fruit trees, thus having to give up the majesty of those centuries-old olive trees, as beautiful as a sculpture! I therefore follow the growth with paternal attention and have the harvest carried out by hand, using a collecting umbrella that keeps the olives high off the ground, to preserve the integrity of the fruit; I chose this innovative method because spreading nets on the ground, as is normally done, inevitably involves the involuntary crushing of the olives by the pickers, starting unwanted fermentation processes that alter the taste of the oil. So, once the fruit is harvested, we proceed with the milling: the olives, once cleaned of leaves and twigs that could give the oil a less pleasant flavor, are taken to the mill in small perforated boxes, so as to maintain freshness and are milled on the same day of harvest (the DOP specification indicates 48 hours). To have an optimal product, the mill must then mill cold, that is, it must not exceed the processing temperature of 28 ° C: higher temperatures, in fact, facilitate the extraction of the oil, shortening the milling times and increasing the final yield of the product, but they alter the taste and denature many of the substances that make olive oil a real panacea for health. Finally, I decided not to filter the oil, but to simply let it decant, so as not to deprive the product of an important part of it. The conservation then takes place in small steel containers, hermetically sealed, to prevent contact with air, which would damage the extra virgin olive oil, oxidizing it. From here, the extra virgin olive oil “Tenute del Caricaturo” is bottled and shipped, to bring the flavors and aromas of my land to your tables.
