How We Make Your Extra Virgin Olive Oil

The 411 on all things EVOO.

When you start to learn about how Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) is made, it can be overwhelming. And rightly so! It is both art and science: You need to strategically harness the natural order and environmental factors, and incorporate it with whatever components are required to produce your desired EVOO. 

To give you a peek behind the curtain, we've distilled the key info about EVOO comes to be and how we make our super luxurious cold-extracted ORO SICANI EVOO.

Let's get into it.

HOW WE PLANT

Maintaining homeostasis within our homestead is central to our ethos. As we continue to expand ORO SICANI Estate, we plant EU-certified Nocellara del Belice, Biancolilla, Cerasuola, and Piricuddara olive saplings, all with ample space so their root systems can properly develop. This is the first critical step in giving olive trees the best chance of becoming the healthiest, most abundant olive trees possible.

YIELD/TREE

One olive tree typically produces 1L of EVOO, sometimes more depending on the year (chiefly due to the rainfall and climate over the past year).

TO BLEND OR NOT TO BLEND...

Why do we blend different olive varietals? The short answer is: Because it makes for more interesting EVOO.

Cold-pressing a blend of olive types into one EVOO produces a more unique and balanced flavour profile. Each olive varietal has its own specific taste, so incorporating these in differing proportions really allows the EVOO to sing. 

SOME OLIVE VARIETALS FEATURED IN ORO SICANI EVOO

Nocellara del Belice olives – give a luxurious “creaminess” to the EVOO, a fruity aroma, and a gentle nutty flavour;

Biancolilla olives – give a delicate, fruity aroma and a light herbaceous taste;

Cerasuola olives – give a robustness to the EVOO, a bold, peppery aroma, and add spicy bitterness;

Piricuddara olives – give you a taste of an olive varietal that is native to the Sicani Mountain region (it’s hard to grow at lower altitudes), and is grassy with a bit of spiciness to finish. 

THE HARVEST

Olive saplings start to reach fruit-bearing age in ~3-5 years, where they are fully mature trees in Year 10. Olive harvesting season – La Raccolta, as it’s called – starts right when there's the first rain of winter, which is typically in late October/early November. The harvesting season continues through to January of the following year because certain varietals are known for needing a touch more time to ripen. 

We harvest according to regenerative farming principles, which means hand-picking olives and/or using hand-held "branch shakers" that comb the olives from the branches into large nets that we lay out on the ground (as opposed to large, non-regenerative, industrial machines that vigorously disturb the olive tree by shaking its trunk and its olives into an umbrella-looking funnel/catcher contraption).

The earlier you harvest in the season, the better the quality of EVOO you produce because of the high concentration of flavour: the more olives ripen and are exposed to the winter rains, the more water they absorb and the more this mellows their inherent flavour profile, which you don't want because it means you'll get a less impressive product.

COLD-EXTRACTING YOUR EVOO

Another critical part of a superior quality EVOO is cold-extracting the just-harvested olives within hours of being pick (no more than 24 hours) to ensure their freshness and the subsequent freshness of the EVOO you produce. Naturally, this is exactly what we do and the results speak for themselves!

Curious to find out? 

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