Six olive groves in the hills above Florence
The groves behind every bottle.
Long enough to be forgotten. Not long enough to be lost.
Traditional groves, steep and unirrigated, brought back into care tree by tree. Each with its own microclimate, varieties and character, and its own oil.
Fly over our grovesOur latest grove to come back
Osteria, nearly thirty years left behind.
Beneath a thirteenth century church, Osteria's Moraiolo trees went untended for nearly thirty years. We began the work in 2020. In 2023 the grove gave its first harvest in decades, and 2026 brought its fourth.
One of Osteria's trees
- Grove
- Osteria, Tuscany
- Tree number
- 78
- Coordinates
- 43.73312 / 11.34360
- Varietal
- Moraiolo
Your tree is assigned after you join, wherever one is available. Guard a tree by December 31 for this year's harvest.
Six groves. No two the same.
Altitude, exposure, varieties, history and the people who tend them give each grove its own character.
A grove is not a warehouse.
Most food now moves like a parcel: picked for speed, stored for months, shipped the same in every season. A grove keeps a different clock. These hillsides are steep, uneven and unirrigated. They give once a year, when the season decides, and nothing about them can be hurried.
Why a restored grove looks bare at first.
A tree left for years grows dense and airless. Opening it up means taking out large branches, and the grove can look stripped. Come back a few seasons later and it's a different place.
Three years, sometimes longer.
That's how long it can take to bring one tree back from abandonment. Even in a restored grove, we will give up as many as two harvests from a tree to prune it back to health.
What a tree tells you before we touch it.
How it lived through abandonment, frost or fire. A tree that grew only at the top asks for one thing. A tree still standing after the frost of 1985 asks for another.
Why no two trees are treated alike.
In industrial farming, when one tree is sick, the whole orchard gets the same treatment. We walk the groves every week, because a tree shows what's right and what's wrong only to someone paying attention, and each one gets what it needs.
The people on the land
None of this happens by itself.
Great extra virgin olive oil is made in the grove. At the mill, it can only be expressed or ruined.
You begin with an intention. Then you answer the individual tree.
Andrea Pagliai is the master grower who has brought these trees back with us, season after season. He is also one of the driving forces on the ground behind the social integration programme that has been part of the work in these groves since 2014, in collaboration with ASL, the local health authority. To date, 57 people navigating mental health challenges, addiction recovery or reintegration after incarceration have worked in the groves through it. They learn the skills of the grove alongside experienced hands. The groves gain people who know them and care for them.
- trees restored to harvest
- 5,000+
- trees restored to harvest
- acres in care
- 72
- acres in care
- hours of social integration each year
- ~4,000
- hours of social integration each year
As of 2026.
Restoration ends. Care never does.
A grove is restored once. Keeping it in care asks for the same commitment every year, and our members make that possible. Guardians are welcome to come and see their tree in the grove, and each autumn, members and guests can join us at harvest to taste the season's first oil.
Harvest in TuscanyThe beauty of the landscapes, the stories behind every answer to a question, the bounty from the earth… together these made this a trip of a lifetime.