Piccolo Campagna

Extra virgin olive oil

Tuscany is famous throughout Italy and the world as one of the best olive oil producing regions. Tuscan extra virgin oil is famous for its beautiful green colour, fruity aroma and taste, yet spicy hot after taste. Piccolo Campagna’s emerald green oil is mild and fruity with a delicate spicy after taste.

The reason our oil different is that our olive trees are completely surrounded by forest, meaning that any insects detrimental to the olives have their predators nearby keeping a natural balance. Our trees are on a north facing slope, known since roman times as the best slope for olives as south is for grapes. The slope itself is important as olives prefer dry roots and the water runs away better on the slope. The altitude is important as the Florence area suffers from high humidity in summer but at our 280m altitude, we don’t have a humidity problem, also we are not that high that the olives suffer in the cold of winter. Lastly we also farm sheep, during the spring, summer and autumn months the sheep graze under the olives depositing a steady supply of natural fertilizer. They turn the olive prunings in to fertilizer as well. In winter they are stalled for three months, producing a large amount of natural concentrated fertilizer which is used during flowering to produce bigger crops of better quality olives.

Picking is the most important part of the oil process, a mistake here can reduce the quality of the oil dramatically. In mass production farms where tree shakers are used the olives fall onto nets on the ground. During this process olives are damaged, damaged olives raise the acidity of the oil. Our olives are hand raked out of the tree into an above ground net resembling an upside down umbrella. As the fall onto a hanging net less damage is incurred and the oil acidity reduces. Picking commences at 8 am each day and by 8 pm that evening they have already been made into oil. This short turn around also helps lower the acidity.