National Geographic Traveller (UK) - Food
LIQUID GOLD
IN TUSCANY’S CHIANTI REGION, MATTEO BOGGIO ROBUTTI, OF AZIENDA AGRICOLA PORNANINO, PRODUCES EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL USING AN ANCIENT METHOD
Olives and grapes are the only two things that grow in this rocky, very rural part of Chianti.
When my fatherin-law brought Pornanino, an abandoned 17th-century Tuscan vineyard estate, he decided to plant olives. His retirement project quickly produced more oil than our family could consume, so we sold it to friends and the business grew from there.
We make extra virgin olive oil using a traditional ‘first cold press’ method that’s almost lost.
Of Tuscany’s 120 or so producers, only a handful use millstones to press. Our method is how the Romans would have done it, but using a motor rather than a donkey to turn the millstone, and then pruning, picking, pressing and bottling by hand.
We’re chemical-free.
The value of extra virgin olive oil is largely assessed on taste, but for us, its nutritional qualities are equally important, particularly the antioxidants that make olive oil central to the healthy Mediterranean diet, and trees grown without chemicals are essential for producing healthy olive oil. We grow 4,000 trees over 88 acres, each in a 13-16ft plot. I start pruning in April and in about six months all trees have been cut to allow sun and air to their branches.
Speed is essential when you harvest.
From the moment the olive is picked, it starts to oxidise, and lose its flavour and nutritional value. Now my father-in-law has fully retired, it’s just down to my wife, Francesca, and me, but every autumn, we hire six to nine people to help us bring in the olives. Hand-harvesting allows you to feel if an olive is ready to be picked — when it’s at its best. Within three to four weeks, all 4,000 trees are harvested, the olives pressed and the oil bottled and distributed.
Good-quality extra virgin olive oil always has a certain bitterness.
If it tastes sweet or flat, it’s old. We produce one type, blending four olive varieties: frantoio (found throughout Italy) and local moraiolo, pendolino and leccino. It has notes of green grass, artichoke and almond, with a peppery, bitter-hops flavour that’s shortlived on the palate.
Tuscan extra virgin olive oil is the best — and one of the most expensive — in the world.
It’s a truly balanced oil that doesn’t overwhelm food but retains character. It’s a great all-rounder, for frying, dressing, roasting and even baking.
Green doesn’t mean good.
The chlorophyll that makes extra virgin olive oil green doesn’t stay suspended for long; that green oil on the supermarket shelf almost certainly has additives. And transparent plastic bottles? Avoid them. Olive oil is sensitive to sunlight and temperature changes, so dark-coloured glass is best. pornanino.com oliveoil.chiantionline.com