The olive harvest: seven days between nets and the frantoio

When

Late October to mid-November

Where

In the property's olive grove

Effort

Picking in the morning, afternoons free

There are two ways to get to know Italian olive oil. One is to buy a bottle in a supermarket. The other takes a week, makes your hands sticky, and tastes like something else entirely afterwards.

Around Casa Bellavista stand some nineteen olive trees. They have to be harvested every year, within a fairly narrow window: around Senigallia the harvest usually begins in late October and runs into the middle or end of November, depending on the weather and how quickly the fruit ripens.

How a harvest day works

In the morning, nets go down under the trees. Then comes the combing: small rakes, by hand, branch by branch. The olives drop into the net, the net is drawn together, leaves are picked out, the sacks go into the shade. It is not hard work, but it is steady work, and the kind you can talk through.

What matters next is speed. Good producers get the fruit to the mill within a few hours and press it cold. The longer olives sit, the more they lose. So a harvest day usually ends at the frantoio, the local mill, where you can watch your own sacks turn into a cloudy, bright green liquid.

Olio nuovo does not taste the way you expect

Freshly pressed oil is not a gentle oil. It catches in the throat, it is bitter, it smells of cut grass and green almond. Those are exactly the markers of good oil, and exactly what fades over the course of the year. Olio nuovo is only around for a few weeks.

Le Marche grows the native Raggia variety among others, typically ripe around mid-November, giving an oil with a distinct note of almond. If you want the classic tasting: toasted bread, a little salt, a generous pour of oil. Nothing else required.

And around it

The harvest is a small celebration in this region. In Scapezzano, part of Senigallia, the Festa dell'Olio Nuovo takes place in early to mid-November: tastings, open mills, regional specialities. A good way to fill a free afternoon.

November in Le Marche is often surprisingly mild. The hills are empty, the restaurants belong to locals again, and in the evening the fire is lit in the living room. It is the most honest season here.