We have 9 other olive oil producers in our olive tree adoption programme. We’ll go and visit them throughout the year, but now is the time that I’ll do a whistle-stop tour of all of them, in one short week. I use the excuse of bringing them the empty 50 litre olive oil containers, which they need to fill, to explain my visit. But, in truth, the oil containers are just a ruse. My real motive is to take a sneaky peak at their olive trees, because now is when we can really see what kind of harvest we’re going to have. Will they be laden with juicy, green/purple/black fruit or are have they failed to produce the goods?
The good news is that this year there are olives aplenty. The only scary story was from Rita, of the Il Taccolito grove, who told me that she would have lost her crop of Piantone di Mogliano if it hadn’t rained in the last week of August – a long dry summer had stressed the trees so much. Anyway, it rained and the harvest survived.
Once I’ve eyeballed the trees we usually get onto the topic of when to harvest, which usually starts around the end of October in Marche. Knowing precisely when to start picking is a bit of an art. As time passes the quantity of oil within in fruit goes up, but at a certain point the quality of the oil starts to drop. So to get an oil that is top quality, and abundant, you need to catch the olive at just the right time. Plus there are a ton of other things to consider. For example the olive groves near the coast, like Fiorano and Dell’Orso, will be ready to harvest sooner than those nearer the cooler mountains, such as Il Professore. In our grove, Rosalio, the trees at the bottom of the grove will be ready to harvest a good 5 days before those at the top.
The next time I’ll do the whistle-stop tour will be in January when I go to pick up the containers, this time full of beautiful, extra-virgin olive oil.
