Tenuta del Barone di Montemurlo — Tuscan extra virgin olive oil
The olive grove
Frantoiano, Moraiolo and Leccino on the hills above Montemurlo. Three varieties that alone would not make a good oil, and together do.
Three varieties, one oil
Frantoiano gives fruit and structure: it is the cultivar that forms the backbone of almost every Tuscan blend, and it has been grown at Montemurlo long enough to have produced a local variety of its own, the Frantoiano di Montemurlo.
Moraiolo brings the bitterness and the pepper — the real ones, the ones that catch at the back of the throat and only show while the oil is young. Leccino softens: sweet and round, it holds the other two together.
Picked and milled together rather than blended afterwards: what is called a field blend, so the balance is born in the mill rather than in a tank.
The harvest
Between October and November, depending on the year. We start while the olives are still green and turning colour, and stop before they are fully black.
The earlier you pick, the less oil you get and the more bitter, green and polyphenol-rich it is. The longer you wait, the more oil comes out and the sweeter and rounder it becomes. That is why one harvest gives two different oils: Luce from the early olives, Raccolto from those of November.
We pick with combs and nets, tree by tree, and the olives go into perforated crates: stacked, they breathe instead of heating up.
The hillside
The trees face south, over the plain between Prato and Pistoia. Monteferrato behind them shelters the grove from the north wind, and the little water the stony soil holds makes for less generous trees and more concentrated olives.
It is not easy land and it does not yield tonnes. It yields good oil.
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