Let's be clear about something: olive oil is made from olives. That's it. That's the whole ingredient list. No secret blends, no mystery oils sneaking in the back door — just olives, squeezed really, really well. If that surprises you, don't worry. It surprises a lot of people.
Here's exactly how your bottle came to be.
Once a year. That's your lot.
Olives don't grow all year round like the bananas at your supermarket. The trees give up their olives just once a year — so there's one shot, one season, to get it right. No pressure or anything.
First week of November, we get to work
Our olives grow on our land in Basilicata, Italy — a sunny corner of the south where the trees have been doing their thing for a very long time. Around the first week of November, harvest begins.
We pick the olives before they mature
Now here's the fun part: we pick the olives while most of them are still green. And here's a plot twist most people don't know — green olives and black olives are the exact same olive. A black olive is just a green one that stayed on the tree longer and grew up. Same fruit, different age.
So why grab them young and green?
Because green olives are little antioxidant bombs — greener olive, bolder oil, more of the good stuff. The catch: younger green olives give up way less oil than older black ones. Squeeze a green olive and you get a trickle; wait for it to ripen and you'd get loads more. But we're not here to make lots of oil. We're here to make good oil.
No waiting — straight to the mill
The second the day's picking is done, the olives hop on a truck and head to the miller in the village. Same day. No sitting in a warehouse, no "we'll get to it next week." The faster an olive gets pressed, the fresher the oil — so we don't waste a minute.
Step one: lose the leaves
At the mill, the olives get a little tidy-up first. All the leaves and twigs that hitched a ride during picking get combed out, so it's just clean olives going in. (Nobody wants a leafy oil.)
Step two: a good wash
Next, the olives get washed — because they've just come off a tree covered in Italian dust, and manners matter.
Step three: the cold press
Now the magic. The clean olives tumble into the pressing machine, where they get ground up while kept nice and cold. Why cold? Because heat is the enemy of flavour. Keeping everything cool (this is what "cold-pressed" means) locks in all the fresh, peppery, green taste instead of cooking it away. Think of it like the difference between a fresh smoothie and one that's been left out in the sun. Cold wins.
Step four: oil, meet freedom
After grinding, you've got a kind of olive paste — oil mixed with pulp, skins, and pits. The machine gently separates the oil from all that leftover mush. The pulp goes off to do other useful things; the golden-green oil goes on to greatness.
From olives on a tree in Basilicata to the bottle in your hand — no blending, no shortcuts, nothing to hide. Just olives, picked young, pressed cold, and handled with a slightly obsessive amount of care.
Now go on.
Drizzle away.
