This year the olive trees in Salento are starting to drop their fruit earlier than usual. This means that we are likely to have less olive oil, as the olives are falling before becoming fully ripe.
We harvest our olives using the most traditional of methods. The ground around the tree is compacted so that when the olives fall, they can be swept up by hand using a traditional broom made of olive branches.
From there they are scooped up in buckets. We shake them by hand in racks designed to separate the detritus from the fruit, then off to the press they go ...
And just in case you Didn’t know ... green olives and black olives come from the same tree. As the green olives ripen they turn black.