LOCATION AND CLIMATE

 

As you might expect, olives grown in cooler areas where there is more moisture (rainfall and dew) exhibit leaner, more restrained characteristics.  This doesn’t however mean that great oil can now be made in Iceland – you need a minimum amount of sunshine to make your Extra Virgin Olive Oil taste remarkable, similarly to tomatoes or stone fruit.

Olive trees are sensitive to winter freeze (the Casaliva cultivar is more resistant to cold, hence being grown in the Garda region).  It is also easier to farm organically where the climate is more stable and less chemical sprays are required to keep the trees healthy.

OLIVE MATURITY

 

Here’s the thing – all olives are green.  When they become fully mature, they turn black.
Olive maturity at the time of harvest is a major factor in flavour and quality: olives harvested earlier (green olives) feature more bitter, grassy characteristics, with lower yields and with the highest anti-oxidant content.  The oil is a much more intense green colour and has a longer shelf-life.  In terms of production, milling can take longer with green olives (a longer malaxation - the action of slowly churning milled olives to release droplets of oil - is needed and can be more complicated) but the results are far superior!  Don’t choose olive oil from over mature fruit: it lacks all the potential goodness and flavour.

ATTENTION TO DETAIL IN GROVE AND MILL

 

People who care passionately about what they make and follow it personally every day have the capacity to create products with far higher quality, with integrity, and that taste of where they come from.  They are also able to do this by caring for the environment they inhabit.

FRANTOIO DI RIVA BOX

This box contains 6 bottles of extra virgin olive oil made exclusively by Frantoio di Riva from groves on the banks of lake Garda.

Frantoio di Riva, 46°PARALLELO green label x 3 bottles (50cl)
Frantoio di Riva, 46°PARALLELO organic white label x 1 bottle (50cl)
Frantoio di Riva, 46°PARALLELO blue label x 1 bottle (50cl)
Frantoio di Riva, ULIVA Garda Trentino DOP x 1 bottle (50cl)

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October 27, 2019 In Italophile

Autumn Leaves

Living in Italy we eat very seasonally: it’s taken us a while to fully get used to the fact that you just can’t eat tomatoes in the winter or broccoli in the summer, but because of this, when the season changes we look forward to the arrival of new flavours hugely. Naturally the most highly anticipated autumn ingredient is new season freshly pressed olio nuovo, which brings life to the pumpkin, cavolo nero, root vegetables and mushrooms that we are currently enjoying.

Our relocation from the 24/7 society, always on, buy what what you want when you want has been an interesting experience which has forced us to really understand the seasons, what we like to eat, and the changing climate.  Oranges and citruses for examples are fruit we have grown accustomed to assume are always there. But since our friends at Tenute Librandi sent us a case of just picked Calabrian oranges, the experience of the taste remained with us, and now we know we have to patiently wait for the winter to appreciate really good oranges.

So we transition from summer, where tomatoes, zucchini, peaches and melon seem to colour all our dishes, to the rougher, rustic flavours of the autumn.  As we witness our climate change dramatically fast, and see our friends who grow olives and grapes having to continually adjust to the effects of this change, maybe it is our responsibility to be less demanding of our planet and continue to understand and appreciate seasonality.