Taste The Earth

Location: Grezzana, Veneto, Italy

In other words: They're outside Verona

For three hundred years, Daniele Salvagno's family has been growing, harvesting, and pressing olives. It's a long-standing family legacy, who's leading role Daniele's just "recently" accepted, when he took over Redoro's operations from his father in 1993-1994.  Even though Taste the Earth's Redoro olive oil is certified organic in Italy, there really is no reason to tend the olive trees in other way according to Daniele.  A delicate temperate balance encourages olives to thrive while pests like olive flies don't flourish because the climate causes the temperature to stay just cold enough in the night. "The fly doesn't like it here," Daniele told us.  "Which makes the climate a gift to us so we can cultivate in this manner," he added.

Besides the organically-grown olives from their orchard of 300 trees, Daniele also brings in olives from several small growers nearby. Altogether, they press four olive varieties (Frantoio, Grignano, Nostrana, and Favarol) in varying quantities each year, depending on the weather that season. Daniele tells us olives need enough rain during pollination; and during maturation in September, October, and November, they need just the right amount of sunlight, warmth, and evening coolness. With all these factors, they'll develop the right taste characteristics that maintain a powerful concoction of vital antioxidants. Daniele has found some varieties fare better under certain temperature fluctuations, while other won't. This is something he can't control.  This is also what keeps his family's oil changing and interesting from one season to the next.

During harvest time, Daniele and his limited staff hand-pick olives from each tree—when they're ready. In scientific terms an olive is ripe depending on an analysis of its water content; but Daniele understands this process without science. He knows the olives are ripe by their color. "The optimum moment to harvest is just when the olive changes from green to viola. One tree might be there while the one next to it isn't.  So we'll harvest the one and wait for the other."

The same day they're picked, the olives are taken to one of Redoro's three frantoios for pressing. One of their frantoios houses a traditional millstone press of granite that towers high, heavy, and solid. Round and round the stone mashes olives into a fine paste that will next be squeezed through mats (fiscoli) and then separated, the oil from the olive's natural water. And from the centrifugal force of the separator spouts a liquid gold three hundred years in the making, Redoro's.

In more words: Even though we've known the family for a long time, we certainly can't boast a friendship longer than how long the Salvagno's have been pressing olives. And not many companies can boast a 300-year history of growing organically.