[Tenuta del Barone di Montemurlo](https://www.oliodelbarone.com/en) — Tuscan extra virgin olive oil # Frantoiano di Montemurlo On these hills the Frantoio — the most widespread cultivar in Tuscany — has been grown long enough to become something slightly different, with a name of its own. ## A variety named after a place Olive cultivars adapt: the same variety planted in two different valleys, over a few centuries, develops differences in leaf shape, yield and cold resistance. When those differences settle, the local variety earns a name. That is what happened here with Frantoio, the cultivar that forms the backbone of almost every Tuscan oil: on the hills of Montemurlo it became Frantoiano di Montemurlo. ## What it brings to the oil Medium fruitiness with grassy notes, artichoke, green almond. Bitterness and pepper present but never aggressive, and above all good body: this is the cultivar that gives structure, the one the others lean on. On its own it makes a complete but slightly predictable oil. That is why Tuscan tradition plants it alongside Moraiolo, which brings firm bitterness, and Leccino, which sweetens and rounds off. ## Why here The hills between Prato and Pistoia sit between two and four hundred metres, with thin stony soils and Monteferrato as a windbreak. These are hard conditions for a tree: little water, stones, wind only partly stopped. A tree that struggles makes fewer olives, smaller and more concentrated. It is no accident that olive growing around here never aimed at quantity. ## In our grove Frantoiano, Moraiolo and Leccino grow mixed together and are picked together, not kept apart to be blended later. The balance is born in the mill rather than in a tank: what is called a field blend. [The estate journal](https://www.oliodelbarone.com/en/journal) [All oils](https://www.oliodelbarone.com/en)