It's October so that means it's time to harvest the olives in Umbria.
We harvest our olives as soon as the local frantoio opens, which is usually mid-October. We want to pick the olives before they start ripening too much because this gives us the most flavorful oil. The tradeoff to harvesting early is that you get less oil, but it's worth it to get that amazing robust flavor.
Yuriy is our operations/property manager at Sant'Angelus and manages the harvest. Michele and Filippo were kind enough to help us out this year, and we really need it! The trees are really full and it's looking like we're going to have about twice as much as last year. At this point, we are about 50% complete with our harvest due to persistent rain and we have had to do a lot of stopping and starting. However, the quality of the oil is fantastic this year and we're very excited to bring this year's crop to market.
After we harvest the olives, we take them to the local frantoio which is an olive mill. Because it's so busy this time of year, you have to take whatever slot you can get. With our first load of olives, we had to show up at 11pm, and our second was at midnight.
At the frantoio, the olives are first sorted, then washed, and then they go into a press, where the oil is separated from the other parts of the olive.
The whole process takes about an hour and the oil is ready! There are no chemicals, preservatives or anything else involved - just pure, unfiltered organic olive oil!
We will update you later with our progress, but so far so good.
Watch a short video from the week of October 21:
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