How We Harvest Our Olive Trees
Everything we do at ORO SICANI is to honour the natural order
We are, fundamentally, a low intervention, regenerative azienda agricola (farm). We've found that, much like with people, the less you pester, the better the results. This is why we give our olive trees the space and time to thrive on their own terms.
While we incorporate cutting-edge technology into how we plant and harvest our beautiful olive trees, we always do so with sustainable growth at the forefront.
No intermediaries. No compromising on quality. Only the purest EVOO direct from our lands straight to your hands.
Our job joy is to optimise these natural processes and discover ways we can improve the cultivation, raccolta (harvest), and post-raccolta phases: from fine-tuning the conditions that help our olive trees to flourish, all the way to investigating how we can minimise our carbon footprint holistically, such as utilising solar power as much as possible and decreasing the number of unnecessary shipments while preserving the integrity of our EVOO.
From our azienda agricola to your tavola
1. Growing Our Groves
Throughout the year we lovingly and consistently tend to the mix of olive varietals, comprising Nocellara del Belice, Cerasuola, Biancolilla, and Piricuddara, on our lands of ORO SICANI Estate. Every olive tree on our estate, newly planted or pre-existing, is geo-tagged so we can monitor our trees and so you can see the exact location of your sponsored olive tree.
2. La Raccolta Begins
When late October/early November arrives, it's time to start harvesting! We use a mixture of hand-picking and gentle, hand-held machinery ('abbacchiatore') to maximise the raccolta. Picking olives just as they're beginning to ripen produces the most vibrantly rich, peppery flavour of EVOO.
That said, sometimes certain olive varietals need more time to be ready for harvest (usually because of the weather conditions that year), so the raccolta can go through December to early January.
3. Cold-Extracting Your EVOO
Within hours of harvesting, the harvested olives go straight to our local oleificio (olive oil mill). Here, they are cold-extracted in the moment so we can give you the purest, finest quality EVOO.
4. Worth The Wait
Once our gorgeous, golden-green EVOO is cold-extracted it goes straight into a sterilised stainless steel tank to decant. Typically we wait 4-6 weeks to allow any remaining sediments and water to separate to ensure you get the purest, highest quality EVOO!
5. Knock-Knock, Amici Delivery!
The final step of this really fun, rare and rewarding process is probably the most exciting for everyone: We then meticulously prepare your ORO SICANI order + securely ship it to you al più presto!
READY TO GET THE ORO SICANI GLOW? ANDIAMO!
