The hills are olive (page 4)
OUR OLIVES are headed for the frantoio, the mill where they
will be crushed. It is dusk, and the air is damp.
The olives swoosh through a water rinse before tumbling out
onto the surface of a massive wheel of Sardinian granite. Atop
this wheel, two more granite wheels rotate on their sides, crushing
the fruit under a tonnage of stone. The oil and water squeezed
from the pulpy mash is shot through a centrifuge. The waste byproduct,
which resembles a dry tapenade, is used for fertilizer
and fuel. The oil that comes streaming out is liquid gold.
UP AT THE VILLA
Getting there The villa Poggio
Etrusco lies just outside
Montepulciano, a beautiful hill
town in Tuscany. Air Canada
offers daily flights to Rome.
From there, you can take the
train to Tuscany or fly on to
Florence and drive the 90
kilometres to Montepulciano.
Staying there Poggio Etrusco
offers an agritourism experience.
The villa is surrounded by olive
trees that are picked by the
guests and turned into organic
extra-virgin olive oil. For more
information and photos of the
villa, go to www.poggio-etrusco.com. For other lodging options
in Montepulciano, the Italian
Government Tourist Board lists
the names, addresses and phone
numbers of 24 hotels in the
area at www.enit.it.
Playing there
Montepulciano
is an ancient Etruscan city filled
with noteworthy architecture
and art and is famous for its
Vino Nobile and Rosso wines.
For information on wine tours or
help navigating Montepulciano
castles and churches, visit
www.montepulciano.net.
|
There are mills that offer more in the way of romantic tradition,
where the crushed paste is slathered on hemp mats, mat
placed upon mat until a tower of mats is hydraulically pressed
and the oil descends in
precious trickles. But
Johns' oil is organically
certified, so her olives cannot
share mats with their
non-organic cousins.
We have harvested, we are proud to say, 539 kilos of olives.
There are trees yet to be plucked, but a spitting rain has prevented
us from returning for a third day to the grove.
Our olives will, this year, yield 17 percent of their weight in oil.
We have come to see each olive as equivalent to a single drop of oil.
But what does it taste like?
ON OUR LAST DAY, a small group of hearty harvesters spends
the morning marching in the wake of Giovanni, a barrel-chested
truffle hunter kitted out in camouflage and big boots and accompanied
by the most adorable little mutt of a dog named Lila.
"Doh-ve, Lila, doh-ve!” Giovanni keeps singing, which my Berlitz
tells me is spelled "dove” and means "where.”
The truffle season has just launched, though Giovanni frets that there has been "rain at wrong time.” Yesterday, his hunt
yielded nothing. But today, Lila can smell the truffles "on the air,”
scrabbling hither and yon at the base of oak and poplar trees and
brilliantly, brilliantly leading her master to a little truffle here
and a larger truffle there, until Giovanni has ever so carefully
placed four white truffles, weighing collectively 74 grams, in the
breast pocket of his hunting jacket.
Later, after the sun has well set, these truffles in all their
loamy redolence will be shaved over risotto at Mondo X, a
restaurant housed in a 13th-century monastery in Cetona. We
will feast of wild hare and deer and smoked trout.
Sooner, at lunch, we travel to the farm of a contessa, herself
an artisanal cheese-maker, milking her sheep twice a day to make
her pecorino. She toasts some bruschetta and sprinkles it with
salt. This she places on a simple, white platter. She approachs
the dining table with, appropriately, a sense of majesty and
pours our olive oil - yes, our olive oil - over the toasted bread.
It is thick and rich and slightly cloudy, a deep, deep yellow. It
tastes not so much peppery as green and buttery. Can something
taste green?
As I write this, I have a plate of bruschetta at my side. I have
brought my olive oil home, a bit disbelieving that I plucked these
very olives with my own hands. I lick the oil from my plate, from
my fingers. I've used a rough sea salt, and it crunches brightly
under the oil. What is that taste? Fresh and unripe. As if just
picked. Which, in fact, it was.
Jennifer Wells is a business writer at The Globe and Mail.
Paolo Destefanis is a photographer based in Siena, Italy.
|
