One family, four thousand olive trees.
Natale used to say he did not have three children but a few thousand: one for every olive tree.
Today Giacomo and the family look after them, one by one.
The wild olives are the ancient trees, the pollinators: four or five hundred years old. The one by the farmhouse is five hundred and sixty.
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An olive tree takes six years before it gives anything.
Many of the trees are over a century old; others were added over time. But before an olive tree gives olives, at least six years go by. We use no chemical fertiliser: we grow green manure, and the grass becomes nourishment.
Each tree gives about 20-25 kilos of olives. They are small compared with the average, because the trees are pruned lightly and in rotation: every year Giacomo personally prunes only a part of them, as Natale taught him.
The olive fly prefers large fruit.
In large olives the larvae find more to feed on and grow better. Ours, small as they are, interest them less. The other thing that favours the fly is a hot, humid climate: our trees are naturally protected from the sea's humidity by the surrounding hills and by infrequent rain.
The harvest, by hand, begins early: late September, early October. The yield is low, but less ripe olives give an oil with acidity close to zero.
After hand selection, pressing is done cold, below 27 °C, the same evening, until late at night, with the same care Natale put into it. What comes out is a green, dense, fruity oil with a note of freshly cut grass.
The frost.
In January 1985 the frost burnt the olive trees of half of Tuscany. Common practice was to uproot the damaged trees and replant. Natale made a different decision: to let the trees regenerate from their own roots.
Today that grove is thriving.
Natale is no longer with us. The trees he chose not to uproot are still here, and every year they give his oil.
“…later the vessels, the miracle, the oil.”
Pablo Neruda, Ode to Oil