Harvesting Olive Oil the Right Way скачать в хорошем качестве

Harvesting Olive Oil the Right Way

November in Puglia is warmer and greener than you expect. Olive groves run in every direction, the trees full and healthy, the land alive. This is where our Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil begins, and you can’t understand it properly without being here during harvest. This year, we travelled to Puglia to be part of the harvest firsthand. Not to tick a box, not for a photo op, but to see, smell, taste, and understand the oil at its very beginning. Because olive oil, like coffee, wine, or chocolate, isn’t a static product. It’s alive. It changes daily. And if you care about flavour, you have to be there when those changes are happening. Letting the Olives Lead There’s a lot of noise right now around early harvest olive oil. Earlier is better. Greener is better. More bitter must mean more “authentic.” We don’t buy into that. The truth is simpler: the olives choose when they’re ready, not us. Harvesting too early can give you an oil that’s aggressively bitter, sharp, and frankly unpalatable. Yes, polyphenols matter. Yes, of course, freshness matters, but so does flavour. The real skill is knowing when to harvest for balance, when the oil is vibrant and peppery, green and grassy, but still luscious and rounded enough to actually want to use. That decision doesn’t come from a trend. It comes from generations of experience. The family we work with in Puglia have been producing olive oil for generations. Watching them work is like watching any true craft: quiet confidence, deep intuition, and total respect for the land. It’s an art form, and being part of it, even briefly, gives you a completely different appreciation for what goes into a great oil. Every Day, a Different Oil One of the most overlooked truths about olive oil is that each day of harvest produces a different oil. As the Coratina olives ripen, the flavour shifts. One day it’s sharper and more herbal. A few days later it becomes rounder, greener, more aromatic. The bitterness softens, the peppery finish becomes more refined. These shifts are subtle, but they matter. This season we’re sourcing just over 90 tonnes of Italian extra virgin olive oil (a real pinch me moment from sourcing only 5 tonnes last year!), which is close to three full silos. Each silo holds oil from a different window of harvest, and each has its own organoleptic profile. None of them are “right” or “wrong.” They’re simply different expressions of the same place, the same trees, the same year. Our job is to taste obsessively across all of them and choose the one that feels just right. Not technically impressive. Not fashionable. Just delicious. An Oil for Finishing, Not Cooking This oil isn’t designed to disappear into a pan. It’s a finishing oil, made to elevate a dish at the final moment. A drizzle over charred veg or a rocket salad. A finish on grilled fish or a simple bowl of tomatoes. We wanted brightness, richness and a peppery lift. A green, slightly grassy edge that wakes a dish up rather than weighing it down. High in polyphenols, yes, but more importantly, alive on the palate. Why We Show Up You can’t choose oil like this from a spreadsheet. You can’t do it over email. You have to walk the groves, taste oils as they’re being pressed, and trust the people who’ve been doing this their whole lives. Spending time with the growers, conversations naturally drift beyond this year’s harvest. It’s a quiet wake-up call about how fragile the olive oil ecosystem in Italy really is. Regions like Umbria have seen devastating impacts in recent years due to Xylella fastidiosa, a bacterial disease that has already wiped-out millions of olive trees and reshaped entire landscapes. A huge amount of work is going into protecting groves and preventing its spread, but it does put things into perspective. Each year a region reports a healthy, abundant harvest feels like something not to take for granted. Olive oil isn’t guaranteed, it relies on stewardship, patience, and care for the land, so this craft can continue for centuries, not just seasons. It’s why we show up, taste carefully, and never take a good harvest for granted.