How Oasi Olive Oil got started

Whilst we enjoyed looking at (or sitting under) the olive trees, with so much cleaning up and renovation work to be done on the property, tending to the olive trees never entered our minds.

So, with the annual olive harvest period having crept up on us and mulling over the fact that we had come to this region to experience different cultural traditions, I promptly offered my services to our neighbour, who was the first person to introduce us to the now familiar buzzing sound of the long pronged mechanical devices that most olive harvesters use to agitate the olive fruit from the tree branches and into the laid out nets below.

Several tiring days later, with approx. Sixty trees were harvested, and the work was done. The following day, aching all over and ready for a lie-in, our mid-70-year-old neighbour came knocking on our door at 6 am and told me in no uncertain terms (via Google Translate) that we now had to harvest our trees as mother nature had done her job in providing the olives. We must not let her good work go to waste.

So off I went again (now with Alison duly recruited) for several more gruelling days where our mentor (20 years our senior) never seemed to tire, but we threatened to disappear into a pool of sweat.

It was a challenging introduction to this new cultural event, but having taken our olives to the ’frantoio’ to be pressed, having smelt the smell of freshly pressed olive oil, and observed the locals hitting the slopes during this harvest, I found it an enriching experience, where I learnt something new. I unexpectedly came to love this period of the year, particularly our 100% freshly pressed, cold extracted, liquid gold (green) olive oil, which we now offer you via our own label Oasi EV Olive Oil.