Olive Oil Heaven

In 2018 our olive orchard at Villa Palazzetta produced 100 liters of extra virgin gold. In 2019 Tuscany had an infestation of flies and we only harvested enough olive to make 15 liters. And it was so bad we didn't even keep it. But in 2020 thanks to the efforts of our incredible agronomist, Matteo Turchi, we produced more than 200 liters of oil. What a bonanza!

Here is a video of a proud Matteo bringing a load of olives up from the orchard. Also see him driving Giada de Laurentiis and Bobby Flay in our little red Piaggio Ape in my previous post about the fourth episode of their new cooking show filmed at our villa.

An entire panel van filled wall to wall with baskets of freshly picked olives.

This is what almost two tons of olives looks like. Olives are stingy with their oil. It takes a lot of olives to make one liter of oil. All these olives made only 200 liters of oil.

The final result, a 500ml can of freshly pressed extra virgin olive oil direct from our olive trees. The can features a watercolor illustration by Lee Riddell.