MAPPING TUSCANY

Tuscan olive trees waiting for adoption... Dreaming of an olive grove in Tuscany?  Forget the grove, it's going to break your back - I speak from first-hand experience  - but adopt a tree instead. Or twenty. Or more.  Olive trees in the park nearly ready for the harvest in October and November  A group of farmers in southern Tuscany are reclaiming 30'000 abandoned olive trees (yes, that's a lot of trees). These are all located in beautiful groves close to or right in Maremma's nature park . Also known as Parco dell'Uccellina, the nature reserve is a wonderful place to visit in person.  As an adoptive parent, you'll be taken for a private tour to the groves. However, you won't have to learn how to properly position a ladder to harvest or prune the trees. Instead, you can hug your adoptee and then spend the rest of the day hiking or swimming at my favourite Tuscan beach .  Souvenir shop in Marina di Alberese The project is under the h...

There are a lot of olives to be picked in 2015 - and they are all in excellent shape. The Italian olive harvest 2015 is the exact opposite of the utterly miserable harvest that took place in 2014.  This October and November plenty of olives are being turned into some of the best Tuscan and Italian extra virgin olive oils of the last decade or two.  The extremely hot summer may have been hard to deal with for humans, but the high temperatures were ideal for Italy's olive trees, since the heat stopped the  reproduction of the crazy pests  that run havoc in the groves the year before (the male of the olive fly goes sterile once temperature hits 32 degrees).   THE OLIVE HARVEST 2015 in NUMBERS Our fifty plus trees produced 815 kg of olives with a yield of 90 kg of extra virgin olive oil  - during the 2014 harvest we picked a mere 90 kg of olives which produced 8 kg of EVOO. For more info on our average yields read my detailed post about the disastrou...

Sniffing out the good olives - not that there were many A combination of bad weather (very mild winter 2013/14 followed by a rainy summer) has led to Italy's most disastrous olive harvest of the century.  Right, the century is still young, but we can only pray that we'll never have to see our grove looking as miserable as this autumn until the end of it. To explain what I'm talking about here some facts and figures from the last three olive harvests in our Tuscan grove and the resulting yield of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO):   In 2012 we picked 542 kg of olives and pressed  74 kg  of EVOO (yield 13%). In 2013 we picked 713 kg of olives and pressed  78 kg  of EVOO (yield 11%). In  2014 we picked   90 kg of olives and pressed    8 kg  of EVOO (yield  9%).  The 2014 olive harvest is just over a tenth of last year's, but we have to consider ourselves lucky that we actually managed to taste our EVOO 2014. Many oliv...

Where to start with that haircut? With Tuscany's extra virgin olive oil being famous world over, it may come as a surprise that the region's olive tree pruning is notorious for its rather cruel approach: Tuscan farmers used to prune only once every two years (and often still do). Pruning is very time consuming, and cutting the tree a Mohawk hairstyle means you can skip a winter before having to get up the ladder again with shears and saw in hand.  I'm no expert on the matter of pruning, but from looking after our very own Tuscan olive grove I've discovered two crucial points for pruning success, which are not always mentioned in olive grove manuals.   In my experience the best preparation to pruning is by doing the olive harvest in the very same grove the year before. The chosen pruning style depends on the technique used during olive picking (i.e. harvest by hand or with a particular type of machine). Once you've been driven mad by unreachable olives du...

Dressing up the olive trees. Fishnet tights for everybody in the grove. 

Another one!? I know. From October to December Southern Tuscany is all about Olive Oil festivals . But remember, we are not talking about yet another old and greasy oil; we are talking about Tuscany's prime and freshly pressed Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO). So even if you have already run into  Gerard Depardieu  tasting EVOO in the Crete Senese or you are still hanging in the trees, busy with your own  olive picking  - it's time for a break. Grab your car keys and get down to San Quirico d'Orcia.

WE ARE COMING TO GET YOU...

The last grapes have been picked, the leaves are turning reddish - it's time to get going on those olives. And Gerard Depardieu is with you on this one. Tuscan olives waiting for their destiny If you join in the fun at the Festa dell'Olio Nuovo  in Trequanda, you may end up sharing your first Bruschetta of the season with the French actor. He is is as infatuated with Tuscany's green gold as you and me.  In fact Gerard Depardieu uses  Trequanda's fabulous extra virgin olive oil  in his very own  restaurant in Paris .  And whilst you can eat away he will have to cut out a minute on Sunday to hand out the 'Premio Giordana Carpi Oliva d'Oro' .