About us
Ours is a small family company in the heart of Abruzzo located in Rosciano on the foothills of Pescara within
the olive-growing area recognized as Aprutino-Pescara Denomination of Protected Origin.
For generations our family has a strong bond with the land and its products, and even today the tradition continues
with the cultivation of olives and grapes and the production of Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
Oil mill
We believe that good quality is achieved without delegating to others the care of its production, and this is the principle
that has guided us in the choice of having the mill in our company.
This allows us to optimize the processing of olives, intervening on the factors determining the quality of oil, such as
the processing within four/five hours of collection, the type of crushing, the choice of time and temperature of kneading, processing of single varieties, the choice of centrifugation.
Our mill allows us to be autonomous of the entire production process without accepting compromises and in the same time to experiment with new technological frontiers of direct extraction linked to the process improvement and conservation
of our olives aromas and flavours.
Processing
Defoliation and washing
The first step olives pass through at their arrival in the oil mill, is the separation of the leaves, twigs and foreign bodies, collected during
the harvesting, and washing with purified water to remove hints
of earth or dust deposited on the fruit.
Pressing
It’s the process of crushing the olive fruits into a homogeneous paste. It’s is a very delicate phase which allows the activation of
the endogenous enzyme assets in biochemical processes which give
the oil the organoleptic and healthy qualities which characterize it.
Kneading
It begins immediately after the crushing and allows the olive paste to continue the enzymatic action of the extraction process and the separation of oil droplets. In this phase, the olive paste is kept within the "container", called kneaders, which operate with slow, continuous stirring at a constant temperature of 23-26 °C and in an enclosed environment with rarefied oxygen to favour the enzymatic action.
It’s the essential phase for the quality of the resulting oil.
Centrifugation
It’s the process which allows to obtain our extra virgin olive oil.
In this method, with the help of a decanter, we separate first the liquids from the solids and then, with a centrifugal separator, the oil from the vegetation water.
Our continuous centrifugation system guarantees a major presence of phenolic antioxidant substances in the oil, a better flavour profile and a more hygienic processing.
By-products reuse
Nothing is wasted neither in the mill nor in the countryside!
We have always been interested in the management and in the reuse
of processing residues. The result is that nowadays the olive processing doesn’t produce any residue and all by-products are reprocessed obtaining reusable materials.
You can see olives entering our mill and then many other materials leaving it: extra virgin olive oil, pomace pellets or pits used to heat our homes and workplaces, vegetation and processing water used as fertilizer on farmland. In the countryside, the pruning residues are ground and reused for commercial heating.
Territory
Rosciano is a small village of medieval origins, founded around the eleventh century. There are very old buildings, such as the medieval castle with the tower called "dei Paladini" in memory of a legend according to which the Giants Paladini constructed the building by the time of the First Crusade. Actually it was the Normans to build the Rosciano and the first military commander of the fortress, Roscio from Montechiaro, gave the village its name. Historical evidences of this territory can also be traced in the ancient cadastral books of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, still well preserved at the Town Hall. In the old town you can also admire the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary (also called Sant'Eurosia, the town’s matron), with seventeenth and eighteenth century paintings. Among the various hamlets in the village there is Villa Badessa, interesting Arbëresh linguistic island; although this language disappeared in the everyday speech, it persists in the liturgical rites of the local parish church of greek-byzantine rite, dedicated to Kimisis (part of the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Lungro in Calabria) where is still kept a rich collection of Byzantine and post-Byzantine icons.
The vestina area
The territory in which we produce our oil is situated in the province of Pescara, in the so-called "vestina", north of the Valle del Pescara. The vestina area inherited its name from an ancient Italic ethnic group which, around the fifth century BC, inhabited the region between Mount Sirente (2,349 meters above sea level) and the Adriatic Sea. Here, in recent decades, the olive-groves remained unchanged and neither families with few plants give up their oil production: this part of central Italy has a very favourable climate for the production of a high quality oil whose peculiarity lies in its fruity taste.
Gentle and silver hills
What strikes you most about our territory is its green-velvet
and silvery colour of its undulating, gentle and low hills due to the plantations of olive trees, interrupted occasionally by herbaceous crops and vineyards. The mountain climate is mild and has the privilege of a fair balance between exposure to wind and humidity. The land, which varies in texture from medium to clayey mixture, contributes to transfer to the olives fruitiness which characterizes our productions.
Myth and History
ELAIDE MYTH
“Nam tactu natarum cuncta mearum
in segetem laticemque meri bacamque Minervae
transformabantur, divesque erat usus in illis “
In fact, everything my daughters touched turned into wheat, or pure wine, or oil, Minerva’s berry.
Ovid, Metamorphoses (Book XIII, 652-54)
Before setting sails from Aulis, the Greek fleet embarked supplies of grain, wine and other foods offered by Anius, king of Delos, which Apollo had secretly generated in Reo, daughter of Staphylos and Chrysothemis.
When she realized that Rhoeo was pregnant, Staphylos closed her in a bonnet left to the sea waves; pushed by the currents on the shores of Evia, Reo gave birth to a baby called Anius in remembrance of the pains suffered for him; Later on Apollo appointed him his priest in Delos ...
His wife Dorippe gave Anius three daughters, Elais, Spermo and Oeno known as the Oenotropae; Anius devoted them to Dionysus thinking it was good to have two gods as protectors of the family. In return, Dionysus promised that everything Elais touched invoking his help would turn into oil; everything that Spermo touched, would turn into wheat; and everything Oeno touched would turn into wine. In this way Anius was able to supply the Greeks with abundant provisions. Agamemnon, however, was not satisfied, and sent Menelaus and Odysseus at Delos in order to ask Anius if Oenotropae could participate in the expedition. Anius refused, telling Menelaus that it was decreed by fate that they should not take Troy until the tenth year.
"Why don’t you stop in Delos in the meantime?" He proposed with welcoming warmth. "My daughters will supply you up to the tenth year, with food and wine, and then accompany you to Troy if necessary." But as Agamemnon ordered: "Bring the girls, with Anius consent or not," Odysseus chained the Oenotropae and loaded them on the ship. And when they escaped, Agamemnon sent ships to chase them and threatened to declare war if they hadn’t surrendered. In fact all the three of them surrendered, but they prayed to Dionysus, who changed them into doves; and from that day on doves are sacred in Delos.
Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (160 t - 160 u)
THE HISTORY OF OIL IN ABRUZZO
Where does the olive tree comes from
In the Levant Mediterranean they found artefacts dating back to 45,000 years ago of olive wood, the wild form of the olive that grows wild in the Mediterranean. The first certain documentation of an olive growing as such comes from Palestine, from Tuleilat Ghassul, north of the Dead Sea, where they found well preserved kernels of a domestic olive, dating back to 3700-3500 BC. Therefore, it is in this area of the Near East we should collocate the primary centre of domestication of the olive tree where the transition from wild species to cultivated tree was completed. And it is always in the Palestinian area, in the Jordan Valley and the Golan hills, that the first documentation concerning oil presses was recovered.
The olive tree in Italy
The first diffusion of the olive in the Mediterranean basin about 1,000 years before Christ is attributed to Egyptians, Phoenicians and Greeks.
In Italy the cultivation developed between the fourth and third centuries BC from the South, then, slowly, it moved north in areas where the plant found very favourable climate and soil conditions for its development.
The olive tree in Abruzzo
The first traces of olive growing in Abruzzo date back to the Roman period, when the protectionist measures adopted by Rome favoured the olive growing expansion and olive oil business; this is evidences by the spread of trapetum, the grinding oil mill of the Latin world. It is Virgil to tell about the presence of olives in the Marsica (now in the province of L'Aquila), where once was Lake Fucino, while Ovid speaks of the olive production in Valle Peligna (now known as Conca di Sulmona).
The Roman municipalities
In the Imperial Age trading was based mostly on agricultural products, oil, wine and cereals and above all between Urbs and Roman municipalities, as Anxanum (ancient town of the italic tribe Frentaini, corresponding to present-day Lanciano), Histonium (today Vasto, another ancient Frentani town), Cluviae (in Carricini territory, one of the four tribes of the Samnite people who occupied the lower Abruzzo area between the Sangro River and the foothills of the Maiella, south of the Frentani territory), Interamnia Praetutianorum (currently Teramo, founded by the Phoenicians and reference centre of the Italic population Pretuzi).
The Dark Ages
The fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the barbarian invasions and the Lombard domination marked the decline of production and trading, until the dark years of the Middle Ages in which prevailed an autarkic type of economy where production of the greatest part of the population was destined to the family consumption.
The work of the Benedictines
It was around the twelfth century, thanks to the work of Benedictine and Cistercian monks, obedient to St. Benedict’s rule ora et labora that the recovery of agriculture and a certain social and economic development were determined in the territory. Their activities took place within the abbeys of San Clemente in Casauria (Pescara today), San Giovanni in Venere (magnificent octagonal temple in the province of Chieti) and Santa Maria d'Arabona (monastic complex in the National Park Maiella), where their work consisting in the upgrading of land and farming practices laid the foundations of a solid olive growing, especially through the first tests of olive tree selection. Notarial deeds and letters document trade and movement of goods which in the last years of the Middle Ages enlivened the central Italian markets, including the oil market, which took off from the ports of the current Pescara, Ortona, San Vito and Vasto to Venice , Dalmatia and other centers of the Adriatic sea.
The transformation of agriculture
During the Spanish domination the Abruzzo agriculture experienced a new period of decline, but starting from the early years of the nineteenth century there was a new change brought by the technical-scientific and political transformations, heritage of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Important results in Abruzzo territory were the disappearance of the feudal latifundia in favour of the formation of the great bourgeois properties and the granting of the church's property to farmers by means of contracts (lease and level). All this involved a structural, social and economic change which was completed at the end of the nineteenth century when a new way of farming was imposed with the application of new agricultural practices and use of modern technical means that were taught and divulgated by the emerging street schools of agriculture, such as the school of Penne (Pescara), built in 1872, and the glorious itinerant “Cattedre” of L'Aquila, founded in 1897, and Chieti, two years later. The agriculture professors, almost always distinguished agronomists, with their detailed and patient work, gave impetus to the development of the whole agriculture, but very specifically to the olive cultivation and olive oil production.