Food and drink
Oil, bread and the cooperative
The valley's olive mill still presses every autumn. You can watch, taste, and carry home a litre that tastes of grass and pepper.
The cooperative press stands on the road between Pietrafonte and Borgo Sant’Elia, in a long steel shed that looks nothing like Il Frantoio and does the same job a hundred times faster. From late October the shed fills with crates of olives, the air smells of green leaf and cut grass, and the first oil of the year comes out of the spout the colour of an emerald.
We can arrange a morning visit, a tasting of the three oils the co-op makes, and a bread-and-oil lunch in the yard. Our chef can come to your villa for a cooking class built around the new oil, and the grocery delivery will bring you a tin of it on the first day.
Outside the harvest, the shop sells the oil all year in tins and bottles. The mild one is for fish, the green one for bread, the peppery one for tomatoes.