Our Process
Our Process
Our process takes patience and effort, but the reward is worth it:
An extra virgin olive oil that will not only change your life for the better, but the life of a community and its people.
The Truth?
Producing any extra virgin olive oil is easy: take olives in any condition, at any time, to any mill, and you will get olive oil, and sometimes even an extra virgin.
But crafting an impeccable extra virgin olive oil is an intricate and delicate process, with countless variables that could falter — it requires expertise, science, intuition, and the harmony of Mother Nature.
Every bottle of our extra virgin olive oil transcends geographical boundaries and tells the story of a grove reborn
Rejuvenate & Sustain: The Lifecycle of Olive Grove Restoration
Rejuvenate
Rejuvenating an olive grove is a rigorous and meaningful process that involves rescuing abandoned olive groves. This phase is a commitment that ensures the healthy growth of each olive. We clean up the olive trees, use different pruning techniques to help plants regain energy, and later shape them to heal and energize the plant while facilitating the harvest process - a symbiotic relationship between the trees, the land, and the people.
Sustain
Sustaining an olive grove protects the trees from neglect, prevents abandonment, and ensures they stay productive for many future harvests. This phase ensures a once-abandoned grove not only recovers but also thrives and remains productive for numerous harvests. Once trees have regained their strength and come back into production, the meticulous pruning, maintenance, harvest, extraction, storage, and transport practices begin.
Crafted with Purpose and Intention
ONE
Our extra virgin olive oil
begins with profound knowledge and dedication to caring for the grove and its trees throughout the year, a commitment that extends to ensuring the healthy growth of each olive.
TWO
The Art and Science
of timely harvesting is precisely executed, ensuring the trees and olives remain unharmed. This process begins by envisioning the profile of our soon-to-be-extracted oil, selectively picking the healthiest olives at the grove-subsection level when they reach the cultivar-specific perfect state of maturation.
THREE
Within a few hours of harvest
our master millers and world-renowned olive oil tasters take over, skillfully extracting the oil in a modern mill. They taste, calibrate, and recalibrate in pursuit of the envisioned sensory profile. Each drop is immediately filtered and stored in temperature-controlled, oxygen-free fusti for further testing and tasting.
FOUR
After rigorous in-house quality checks
we ensure unbiased results by having the oil evaluated by world-renowned professional tasters along with independent certified chemical laboratories and sensory panels.
FIVE
Production for each lot respects the natural yield of the tree
and is limited to the grove's tree count. To preserve the artisanship, quality, and integrity of our oil, we do not purchase olives from outside sources or blend in any external oil to increase production volumes.
SIX
The oil is bottled oxygen-free at the source,
under the strict supervision of the Abandoned Grove team, then shipped immediately to maintain peak benefits and the unique seasonal characteristics of exceptional, extra virgin olive oil.
This work is equal parts passion, patience, and trust in the process and in the idea that nature knows best.
It may not be the easiest way to do business, but to us, it’s just good taste.
"A great olive oil has the ability to change your life, the one of a community and the planet."
~ Fil Bucchino, Founder & Awarded Olive Oil Expert