Tuscan Producers Manage Difficult Harvest to Achieve Outstanding Results

Despite the chal­leng­ing har­vest con­di­tions, Tuscan pro­duc­ers were able to attain remark­able out­comes.

Italy was again the most awarded coun­try at the 2023 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

Producers from the Boot earned 173 awards from 224 entries, the third-high­est suc­cess rate of any coun­try with more than ten entries at the NYIOOC and con­sis­tent with pre­vi­ous per­for­mances by Italian pro­duc­ers.

Tuscan farm­ers sig­nif­i­cantly con­tributed to this suc­cess – they sub­mit­ted a record num­ber of entries and were one of the most rep­re­sented regional groups in the Official Guide to the World’s Best Olive Oils.

Award-win­ning extra vir­gin olive oils made in Tuscany are mainly obtained from autochtho­nous vari­eties, cul­ti­vated with a par­tic­u­lar focus on safe­guard­ing the land, from the ter­raced hill­sides of the Tyrrhenian coast to the rolling slopes that sur­round inland vil­lages.

Like many other Italian and European grow­ers, Tuscans faced an intense drought over the past year. Still, they over­came the threat of water stress and achieved a good yield with out­stand­ing lev­els of qual­ity.

“The suc­cess of our oils at the NYIOOC, for which I con­grat­u­late the win­ners, is another great oppor­tu­nity to stim­u­late the com­mit­ment of the com­pa­nies to con­stantly improv­ing the qual­ity of their prod­ucts,” Tuscany’s vice pres­i­dent and coun­cilor for agri-food, Stefania Saccardi told Olive Oil Times.

“The con­sumer who buys cer­ti­fied Tuscan oil has the cer­tainty of buy­ing an extra­or­di­nary prod­uct that recounts a fan­tas­tic ter­ri­tory,” she said, empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of pre­serv­ing the region’s olive land­scape and bio­di­ver­sity.

“Tuscany pro­motes sus­tain­able farm­ing mod­els with low envi­ron­men­tal impact, in line with the objec­tives of the European Green Deal, the Farm to Fork strat­egy and the Common Agricultural Policy,” she said.

Among the win­ners is Dimora Girlandaio, which earned a Gold Award in its NYIOOC debut with a blend of Moraiolo, Frantoio and Leccino olives pro­duced in Colle Ramole, out­side of Florence.

“The olive oil pro­duc­tion has become, over time, a com­ple­men­tary activ­ity to our high-end agri­tourism,” owner Marco Cecchi said. ​“Our 2,500 olive trees were replanted after the 1985 frost by my grand­fa­ther, who made such a blend first, then my father did it.”

“Today, we want the qual­ity of our oil to be at the same level as our top-class hos­pi­tal­ity, which is char­ac­ter­ized by a search for authen­tic­ity through the con­nec­tion with the ter­ri­tory that we intend to safe­guard,” he added.

The estate was orig­i­nally the coun­try res­i­dence of the famous Renaissance painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, whose art­work is wide­spread in Florence and through­out Tuscany. ​“In their time, they already pro­duced olive oil from these groves,” Cecchi said.

The com­pany is now con­vert­ing to organic prac­tices but has long been pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able farm­ing man­age­ment; a pho­to­voltaic sys­tem sup­plies its energy, and the pro­duc­ers have a lake for water recov­ery.

“This care for sus­tain­abil­ity is also reflected in the choice of our sup­pli­ers, who are all local,” Cecchi said. ​“Already while ren­o­vat­ing the struc­ture and the estate, we chose to com­mu­ni­cate our con­nec­tion with this land and the com­mit­ment to pre­serve it by restor­ing nearby areas, includ­ing ancient dry stone walls and rural roads.”

The blend pro­duced at Podere Il Montaleo also impressed the NYIOOC judges, win­ning a Gold Award for its intense, har­monic com­bi­na­tion of Moraiolo, Frantoio, Maurino, Leccino and Pendolino olives.

“My fam­ily has owned this prop­erty since the mid-1800s, and in 2009, I cre­ated the com­pany focus­ing on high qual­ity,” said Cesare Diddi Mussi, who man­ages about 6,000 trees on the hills between Casale Marittimo and Bibbona, in the province of Pisa.

“We have a com­pany mill com­plete with a bot­tling line, all equipped with the lat­est gen­er­a­tion machin­ery,” he added. ​“We pay great atten­tion to har­vest­ing the fruits at the right time and crush­ing them in a few hours.”

Varieties from other regions, such as the Tonda Iblea, were added to the orig­i­nal grove, which already hosted the afore­men­tioned native Tuscan vari­eties and Lazzero from Val di Cecina.

Despite the drought, the har­vest was sat­is­fac­tory and excel­lent in qual­ity. Using an irri­ga­tion sys­tem helped the olive grove to over­come the dry­ness.

“Our com­pany is con­stantly evolv­ing and exper­i­ment­ing,” Diddi Mussi said. ​“The mill is con­tin­u­ously updated to improve the qual­ity of our prod­ucts.”

“Close to it, immersed in the olive grove, we will soon build a struc­ture with a kitchen where we will pair our oils and other local agri-food prod­ucts,” he added. ​“We do a lot of research. The awards obtained over the years at the NYIOOC show us that we are going in the right direc­tion.”

Another major acco­lade went to Le Balze di Fontisterni for an intense blend of Moraiolo, Frantoio and Leccino olives with notes of almond pro­duced by Tom Luger in the vil­lage of Pelago, not far from Florence.

Born in Munich, Germany, Luger moved to Italy in 1996. ​“My father’s grand­fa­ther was Italian from South Tyrol, and I had a strong con­nec­tion with this coun­try,” he said. ​“At the begin­ning of 2020, I took over this prop­erty to make an agri­tourism oper­a­tion and pro­duce oil, which for me has always been an extra­or­di­nary prod­uct.”

Shortly after tak­ing over the prop­erty, the Covid-19 pan­demic ensued and stopped agri­tourism activ­i­ties. As a result, he under­took his first har­vest.

“After a test pro­duc­tion, I par­tic­i­pated in the last year’s NYIOOC, obtain­ing a Silver Award. The Gold Award that I earned at the 2023 NYIOOC guar­an­tees that the qual­ity has increased, and I will con­tinue to improve it,” he said.

His 250 trees are located partly on ter­races and partly on rolling hills. The fruits are har­vested by hand and quickly deliv­ered to a local state-of-the-art mill. Throughout the process, from the man­age­ment of the grove to the use of resources, Luger adopts a sus­tain­able approach.

“Taking care of the envi­ron­ment where my olive trees grow is fun­da­men­tal,” he said. ​“Aiming for such high stan­dards in the con­text of cli­mate change required much work, but this recog­ni­tion repays all my effort.”

“The feed­back from pro­fes­sional tasters who assess hun­dreds of oils from all over the world is very impor­tant, as it inte­grates the sat­is­fac­tion of our con­sumers,” Luger added.

At its first par­tic­i­pa­tion in the NYIOOC, Frantoio di San Gimignano earned a Gold Award with its PGI Toscano.

“Our fam­ily com­pany was founded in 1950 with the estab­lish­ment of our his­toric olive mill in Monte San Savino, in the province of Arezzo,” said Alberto Morettini. ​“In 2019, we acquired this sec­ond mill, which was estab­lished long ago as well, which we restored and relaunched.”

Close to the facil­ity, amid the rolling hills of San Gimignano, between Siena and Florence, the Morettini com­pany man­ages olive groves com­posed of Frantoio, Moraiolo, Leccino, Maurino and Leccio del Corno trees – the lat­ter of which is used to pro­duce the award-win­ning mono­va­ri­etal extra vir­gin olive oil.

“We par­tic­i­pated in the NYIOOC to present the high-qual­ity prod­ucts made in our mill on the global stage, to launch the Frantoio di San Gimignano brand,” he said, spec­i­fy­ing that they press their fruits and those deliv­ered by the local farm­ers.

The lat­est-gen­er­a­tion tech­nol­ogy of the mill includes ver­ti­cal vac­uum malax­ers, which shorten the knead­ing stage, and a two-phase low-tem­per­a­ture decanter.

“It does not require addi­tional water, allow­ing us to save this pre­cious resource,” Morettini said. ​“To reduce waste, we reuse all the by-prod­ucts, from the olive pits, that become bio­mass for the pro­duc­tion of energy, to the olive leaves, that turn into an ingre­di­ent to pro­duce a liqueur by infu­sion.”

“This award makes us very happy since it con­firms the valid­ity of the work we car­ried out in this new struc­ture,” he added. ​“Here, we brought all our knowl­edge also to the ser­vice of the farm­ers of the area who aim at pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils. Our suc­cess indi­cates that our qual­ity-ori­ented work can be very impor­tant also for the ter­ri­tory.”

Two other Gold Awards went to Badia a Coltibuono, whose olive groves are located between Gaiole in Chianti, in the province of Siena, and Cavriglia, in the province of Arezzo.

“We are so glad to receive these pres­ti­gious recog­ni­tions for Albereto, which comes from our olive groves, and Badia a Coltibuono, for which we selected pre­mium extra vir­gin oils from other Italian regions,” said Roberto Stucchi Prinetti. ​“We are first of all pro­duc­ers and now also selec­tors.”

“We are a fam­ily com­pany that also offers hos­pi­tal­ity and pro­duces wine,” he added. ​“We started bot­tling olive oil in 1962 and have been grow­ers for many gen­er­a­tions – since 1846.” This is the year when they set­tled in the estate, which has at its heart a for­mer monastery – in Italian ​‘badia’ – that now hosts part of the agri­tourism and the cel­lars.

His blend com­bines Leccio del Corno, Frantoio, Pendolino and a small per­cent­age of Maurino olives. The grove also includes rows of Leccino Minerva.

“Since the frost of 1985 destroyed the trees pre­vi­ously present in the estate down to the roots, the olive groves were replanted after­ward,” Stucchi Prinetti said.

Perched on high hills about 550 meters above sea level, the olive trees face north, enjoy­ing a cool, dry envi­ron­ment.

“This soil and cli­mate fea­tures usu­ally help avoid pests and keep the plants thriv­ing,” Stucchi Prinetti said. ​“We do not even need an irri­ga­tion sys­tem.”

Yet, last year, the drought was so intense that it caused a fruit drop and a slight decline in pro­duc­tion. However, the rains finally arrived just before the har­vest and helped them to col­lect healthy olives, from which they obtained an excel­lent prod­uct.

“Our com­pany has been cer­ti­fied organic since 1994,” Stucchi Prinetti said. ​“This shows the atten­tion we have always paid to sus­tain­abil­ity. We use cover crop­ping, com­post­ing and all the most sus­tain­able tech­niques avail­able to us to safe­guard the envi­ron­ment and, there­fore, to pre­serve the beauty of our land.”