[Tenuta del Barone di Montemurlo](https://www.oliodelbarone.com/en) — Tuscan extra virgin olive oil # Olive oil from Tuscany Tuscan olive oil is among the most sought-after extra virgin olive oils in the world, and among the most imitated. This is an honest guide: where it is made, the varieties, the harvest, the taste, how to read the label and how to buy it from the people who grow it — with our own grove in Montemurlo as a working example. ## Where olive oil is made in Tuscany Olive trees grow almost everywhere in Tuscany, but rarely on the flat. The groves climb the hills: from the Maremma coast and the hills behind Lucca, through Chianti and the slopes around Florence, up to the foothills of the Apennines, where it gets too cold for them. Terraces, dry-stone walls, thin stony soil — this is the landscape most people picture when they think of Tuscan olive oil. The hills matter for the oil. On poor, well-drained ground the trees bear less fruit and the olives are more concentrated. Many Tuscan groves are small and family-run, a few hundred trees, which is why so much of the oil is still picked by hand. Ours is one of them: on Via Baronese at Riva di Bagnolo, on the hills of Montemurlo between Prato and Pistoia, at the foot of Monteferrato. ## The varieties: Frantoio, Moraiolo, Leccino, Pendolino Tuscan oil is rarely made from a single variety. Four varieties, which complement each other, turn up in almost every grove. Frantoio — called Frantoiano in many places, ours included — is the backbone: fruity and structured, with green notes of artichoke and grass. Moraiolo, small and dark, brings the bitterness and the pepper. Leccino is gentler, sweet and round, and softens the other two. Pendolino is often planted among them as a pollinator and adds a delicate fruitiness of its own. After the great frost of 1985, which killed or damaged a large share of the region’s trees, many groves were replanted or grew back from the stump, and the same varieties went back in. Our grove has Frantoiano, Moraiolo and Leccino, picked and milled together: the balance is made at the mill, not blended afterwards in a tank. ## Harvest and milling The Tuscan harvest is early by Mediterranean standards. It runs through October and November, while many olives are still green or just turning colour. Picking early gives less oil per olive, and an oil that is greener, more bitter and more peppery; picking later gives more oil, sweeter and rounder. Time matters even more. A picked olive starts to oxidise, and if it waits in a crate for days it starts to ferment. Careful producers mill within hours, not days. We pick by hand in October and November, and the olives picked in the morning are milled the same afternoon, at a mill 870 metres from the grove. The same trees give two oils: Luce from the early green olives, Raccolto from the full harvest in November. ## How it tastes: green, bitter, peppery New oil from the Tuscan hills is usually green on the nose — cut grass, artichoke, green almond — then bitter and peppery in the mouth. The pepper does not sit on the tongue but catches at the back of the throat: in Tuscany they say the oil “pizzica”, it stings. That surprises people used to mild supermarket oil, but it is a good sign. Bitterness and pepper come from polyphenols, which are at their highest in fresh oil from early-picked olives and which also help the oil keep. They soften over the months; an oil that never had any was either picked very ripe or is no longer fresh. Our Luce is distinctly bitter and peppery; Raccolto is rounder, with sweet almond ahead of artichoke and a gentle pepper. ## Reading the label: what “Tuscan” really means “Toscano” is a Protected Geographical Indication of the European Union. An oil sold as Toscano PGI has to follow its own production rules — where the olives grow, which varieties, how it is milled and bottled — and is checked by an independent control body. You will recognise it by the name on the label together with the EU PGI logo. Our oil does not carry that designation, and we do not use it. What we can say is this: 100% Italian extra virgin olive oil, from our own olives, grown and milled in Tuscany, at Montemurlo. On the label you will find “100% Italian”, who harvested and packed it, and the harvest season. Elsewhere, read the small print. “Packed in Italy”, “bottled in Italy” or “imported from Italy” tell you where the oil was bottled, not where the olives grew. A “blend of EU oils”, or “of EU and non-EU oils”, can come from anywhere. A Tuscan landscape on the bottle proves nothing. What counts is the origin of the olives stated plainly, who made the oil, and when it was harvested. ## Buying it from abroad, straight from the grower The surest way to know where an oil comes from is to buy it from the people who grew the olives. We sell only our own oil and ship it from the estate — across Italy, the European Union and worldwide — in shock-proof packaging. There is no distributor and no warehouse in between: what reaches you is the oil we milled. Each country has its own shipping page with delivery times and costs, and the cart shows the exact figure for your address before you pay. Buyers in the United States have a page of their own that explains import duty. If you are travelling in Tuscany, you can visit the estate by appointment and taste both oils. ## Storing it Dark, cool, closed. Light, air and heat are what ruin olive oil: keep it in a cupboard, away from the stove and the window, and once it is open finish it within a couple of months. No need for the fridge — cold makes the oil cloudy, and it clears again at room temperature with no harm done. It is at its best in the first six months, so buy what you will use, and buy it new. [Write to us](https://www.oliodelbarone.com/en/contact) [All oils](https://www.oliodelbarone.com/en)