Innovation Yields World-Class EVOO from Restored Groves of Former Monastery

In their third year of pro­fes­sional olive oil pro­duc­tion, the hus­band and wife team behind Cultura Viva are becom­ing accus­tomed to award-win­ning fin­ishes to the sea­son.

Laurence Deprez-Zenezini and Stefano Zenezini recently earned their sec­ond-con­sec­u­tive Gold Award at the 2023 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition for the Le Clarisse brand.

The cou­ple attrib­uted their suc­cess to inno­va­tion and their goal of sus­tain­able, high-qual­ity olive oil pro­duc­tion. Their approach proved even more cru­cial than their olive grow­ing expe­ri­ence.

“It is true. We do not have gen­er­a­tions of fam­ily his­tory in olive oil pro­duc­tion to guide us through,” Deprez-Zenezini and Zenezini told Olive Oil Times. ​“We tend to believe that the absence of such her­itage helped us embrace mod­ern farm­ing tech­niques and inno­v­a­tive solu­tions, both in the groves and the mill.”

The company’s co-founders have Belgian and Italian roots and spent decades in the United States, where they live part of the year with their chil­dren. They recently com­pleted the Olive Oil Times Education Lab’s som­me­lier course in New York.

Le Clarisse is mainly sold in the United States and is an organic blend of Moraiolo, Frantoio and Leccino olives. It is named after a for­mer monastery that hosts the trees and used to belong to the epony­mous order of Catholic nuns.

The evoca­tive name inspired the bot­tles’ award-win­ning logo designed by the couple’s daugh­ter, Louise-Audrey. ​“Ours is a truly fam­ily-run com­pany, as you can see,” Deprez-Zenezini said.

The monastery is located in Collazzone, among the Martani Hills, a well-known wine and olive pro­duc­tion area in the heart of Umbria.

“Today, the for­mer monastery and the 40 olive trees that cir­cle it is the home of our com­pany Cultura Viva, together with the more than 600 olive trees spread over the hills,” Deprez-Zenezini said.

The monastery was built in the 13^th Century CE, but its olive grove was scarcely main­tained in recent decades. Therefore, it under­went rel­e­vant prun­ing and recov­ery oper­a­tions.

“When we began work­ing on it, it had been neglected for a long time,” Deprez-Zenezini said. ​“Unsurprisingly, many of those trees are cen­turies old.”

“To those groves, we just added 124 new trees of the Don Carlo cul­ti­var, which will carry new fla­vors, such as toma­toes,” she added. ​“So we can already start plan­ning new blends.”

The Don Carlo trees are two years old and cov­ered in white flow­ers. ​“The cur­rent sea­son seems to be pro­ceed­ing very well,” Deprez-Zenezini said.

“We are not look­ing to man­age thou­sands of olive trees,” she added. ​“Since the begin­ning, our idea was to only take care of those we could care for by our­selves; that is very impor­tant for us.”

A key aspect of Cultura Viva’s organic farm­ing is sus­tain­abil­ity and regen­er­a­tive agri­cul­ture, through which they work to pre­serve nat­ural resources and restore soil health.

“A sus­tain­able, envi­ron­men­tally-friendly per­ma­nent agri­cul­ture means study­ing how to work with nature and its cycles and the avail­able resources,” Deprez-Zenezini said.

“For exam­ple, when you mow the grass, you leave it there, on the spot, to give nutri­ents back to the soil, its own resources,” she added. ​“It means to mow the grass when the time is right, as it can affect soil mois­ture and fer­til­ity.”

According to the Zenezinis, all olive oil oper­a­tions in Cultura Viva have been imag­ined and planned fol­low­ing these prin­ci­ples.

“Think of the water resource man­age­ment. In our orchard, we built swells that fol­low the hill’s gra­di­ent,” Deprez-Zenezini said. ​“Through them, rain­wa­ter reaches areas where a lot of chipped wood and organic mate­r­ial receive the water and store it, just like a sponge.”

“Such infra­struc­ture allows for pro­gres­sive water infil­tra­tion into the soil,” she added. ​“It is an exper­i­ment that we wanted to try given the need to adapt to drought and the effects of cli­mate change.”

“All our efforts in the last three years have been focused on nur­tur­ing and restor­ing the soil in the orchards,” Zenezini said. ​“An exam­ple of this is the field beans we grow, and we have just mowed to nour­ish the soil.”

“We focus on qual­ity, not quan­tity,” the cou­ple noted. ​“But we are also aware that the health­ier the trees will be, the more prob­a­ble it is for their olive oil yield to grow as well.”

A cru­cial aspect of extra vir­gin olive oil qual­ity is deter­mined by the olive milling oper­a­tions, which a third party does. Zenezini said the cou­ple took their time and care­fully selected the best mill for their pur­poses.

“It is a local part­ner­ship, as we only work with peo­ple of the local com­mu­nity,” he said. ​“It is an excep­tional mill, highly inno­v­a­tive.”

“Among the many inter­est­ing par­tic­u­lars of the mill is its patented pro­pri­etary tech­nol­ogy for crush­ing the olives,” Zenezini added. ​“It also has an ultra­sound appa­ra­tus between the crush­ing and malax­ing processes which short­ens the knead­ing times, keep­ing oxi­da­tion at bay, while enhanc­ing olive oil’s fla­vors and polyphe­nols.”

Cultura Viva also chose the mill because it does not use water in the milling process and has a zero-waste pol­icy. ​“It does not pro­duce any waste, as all remains from the olive pro­cess­ing oper­a­tions go to a biodi­gester,” he said. ​“Everything is recy­cled.”

While the com­pany focuses on sus­tain­able farm­ing, Cultura Viva’s activ­i­ties are not lim­ited to pro­duc­tion.

“With this project, we aimed at nur­tur­ing a healthy liv­ing approach, made of liv­ing in nature, eat­ing qual­ity sus­tain­able organic food and giv­ing back to nature,” Deprez-Zenezini said.

“Not only agri­cul­ture but also pro­duc­ing cul­ture out of our recov­ery and restora­tion activ­i­ties in such a beau­ti­ful loca­tion,” she added, hint­ing at the incom­ing launch of spe­cial cul­tural ini­tia­tives by Cultura Viva, both in Italy and the United States.

“Think of events such as pub­lic olive oil tast­ings to teach the dif­fer­ences among olive oils, healthy cui­sine courses, yoga classes and more on how to stay healthy,” Deprez-Zenezini con­cluded.