PRODUCTION
Nurturing of our olive grove
The L’UPUPA olive grove is a little treasure. We have a mixture of young and over 1000-year-old olive trees. On our olive grove we have a variety of olive trees producing Ogliarola, Cellina di Nardò and wild olives. Before the trees blossom in spring, we cut back the water shoots and design the tree on how we want it to boost out later in the year. Olive trees generally bear fruits every second year. This two-year cycle is very important to the tree and the olive yield. We care for our olive grove in a totally natural way. We specifically choose not to use any pesticides or chemical fertilizer.
When are the fruits ripe?
For high quality olive oil, olives of three different stages of ripeness are getting used: the green unripe olives, medium ripe blueish/green olives and the blue ripe olives. Our olive oil is made out of roughly one third of each and to get a healthy and good quality olive oil.
Olive Harvest
We usually harvest our olives from mid-October until November. The olives have different stages of maturity. The mixture of olives from the early and mature stages defines the flavour of our Extra Virgin Olive Oil. To guarantee the best quality, our olives are picked by hand or with an olive picker. We collect the picked olives in nets and prepare them for transport to the olive press shortly after in aired crates.
Organic Oil Press – Bio Frantoio
We produce our Extra Virgin Olive Oil in an organic Frantoio. Despite the romantic tradition of making oil with a stone mill, we choose the more hygienic and pure way of extracting the oil. By using a stainless steel decanter we can produce superior and healthier olive oil.
The first step is to separate the olives from dirt and other debris. Then the olives get rinsed, before being ground into a mash.
Decanting, Filtering and Storage
The mash is then warmed up to max. 25° C and after approximately 25 minutes decanted to Extra Virgin Olive Oil. This means oil gets separated from the rest of the olive fruit and is extracted into another container. Then the fresh olive oil gets filtered to remove sediments and bottled airtight in dark bottles, to keep its quality.