Olives! Picked, Cracked and Preserved.
Calabria is Italy’s second largest grower of olives and producer of olive oil. It’s neighboring region of Puglia (“the heel”) is the first.
Olive oil is the base for most Calabrian kitchens. It’s used freely as an ingredient and for frying as well. Olive trees cover well over a quarter of the region, so the oil from these trees is widespread and not exactly considered as precious as the rest of the world views it, since there’s so much of it. Calabria produces more olive oil than any other Italian region except for Puglia.
In the last decade, the Calabrian olive oil industry has been evolving, with many farmers putting quality first by growing more varieties as well as growing them organically. Some of the newer olive varieties include Ottobratica and Sinopolese which tend to be more fruity and there are also the indigenous Calabrian varieties like Carolea, Tondina and Dolce di Rossano which produce a sweet and buttery oil.
Some of these olive varieties are also grown right on the farm and we pick them to crack or preserve in brine in one of our classes.
The farm itself produces a small batch of their own organic extra virgin olive oil every harvest from their grove to import to the USA, Australia and Europe. Here at the Saucery, we use their organic extra virgin olive oil in all of our sauces. Some of the olive trees on the farm date as far back as four centuries and are UNESCO protected. I highly recommend sitting under one on our next tour and just listen to these magical and ancient trees blow in the crisp-clean Aspromonte air.
This is what pure olive oil looks like. GREEN! This is the farm’s facility cold pressing a batch of their extra virgin olive oil to bottle and distribute abroad.
These are the glass containers with whole unripe olives we picked ourselves on the farm and jarred to rest under water, salt, wild fennel, garlic and hot Calabrian peppers, called Olive in Salamoia.
Watch some video highlights from our olive picking day, 2019 Culinary Tour