Celebrating the Olive Harvest

The story of the olive harvest – the olive’s journey from tree to your table – is a delicious tale of talent, experience, luck, persistence, speed, and most of all, a dedication to flavor.

Hundreds of varieties of olives are grown and made into olive oil in Mediterranean countries of which Italian olive oil certainly ranks among the best.  Nearly every region of Italy produces its own distinctive oil – from the delicately flavored oils of the sea-breeze-swept “Riviera dei Fiori” of Liguria to heartier oils of sun-drenched Puglia and Sicilia – and of course the fragrant oils of Tuscany – the inspiration behind this idea for an intimate gathering with family or friends.

Like wine, the simplest and best way to appreciate olive oil is to taste it.  Our Tuscan olive oil tasting dinner party is a fun way for you and your guests to celebrate the olive harvest, usher in the Fall season, and discover how surprisingly delicious and flavorful truly good olive oil can be.

The harvest

In most countries, olives are harvested from November to January, but in Tuscany, the olive harvest can begin as early as late September, because the region’s cooler climate brings on frosts that can wipe out an entire olive crop.  Usually, the olives are picked by hand while they are still green and not quite ripe using the traditional method called brucatura, in which olives are “combed” from the branches with a scissors-shaped instrument.  Mechanical harvesting is becoming more common, but brucatura is still considered the ideal way to harvest olives, because it protects both the olives and the trees from damage.

Harvesting olives is hard, often tedious work.  Traditionally, the olive growers of Tuscany will reward family and friends who help out with the harvest with an al fresco picnic lunch right there in the olive grove: a bottle of good wine, some Tuscan bread and cheese, perhaps a mixed grill of meats or Tuscan white beans with rosemary.  Many travel companies now offer trips to small farms or estates in Tuscany, where guests can spend a week picking olives, eating authentic Tuscan cuisine, enjoying the gracious hospitality and landscape, and watching as the olives are processed into fine oil.

Pressing for flavor

Time is of the essence!  Once they are harvested, olives, like grapes, must be pressed as quickly as possible to avoid oxidation or fermentation, which can mar the flavor of the oil or make it taste rancid.  Each olive consists of only about 20 percent oil, so it takes a few hundred olives to make less than a single liter of oil; often, producers of the finest oils can extract only a liter or two of oil from an entire olive tree.  

In Tuscany, the olives are taken to a communal mill called a frantoio, to be pressed into oil and bottled. At the mill,the olives are crushed to create an olive pulp.  The pulp is further processed to extract a mixture of oil and water. The oil and water then are separated in a centrifuge and the fresh, fragrant oil is poured into terra cotta jugs or, at more modern mills, into steel tanks. The oil is left to sit for 30 and 40 days to clear, after which it is filtered and bottled.