"D, how wud u like 2 go 2 tuscany wit me 2 pick olives, end of oct 4 a week?" read the text received out of the blue in late September from my friend Prue Rudd in Offaly. It instantly brought to mind the dreamy, rolling hills of the Italian countryside far from the clamour of the city catwalks. Oh, yes, I replied, I'm on the plane. Three weeks later we were on the road to Arezzo from Rome for the beginning of the harvesting season, writes Deirdre McQuillan.
Our destination was an organic farm in a panoramic valley setting some 2,000 feet above sea level, four kilometres from the Renaissance hill town of Cortona. Prue had been twice before and loved it. The owners are two hard-working, idealistic Belgians, Luc Van Cauter, a former EU Commission parliamentary secretary and his wife, Brigitte Wyckhuyse.
After falling in love with the place in l994, the pair decided to put down roots in Tuscany and restore the farm and its olive groves, an old plantation abandoned for 30 years. Their home is a converted watchtower, built in the 13th century and enlarged in the l6th century; their family comprises six donkeys and two dogs; their visitors are mostly Belgian professionals. They return to Brussels in December every year to sell their premier cru oil at private tastings.
Common methods of harvesting involve shaking the trees manually or mechanically or raking the fruit into nets. Their farm is one of the few in the area where olives are hand-picked in the traditional "brucatura" way, the fruit never touching the ground. It is rigorous and labour intensive, but results in unbruised fruit and premium oil, necessarily expensive, with the highly prized low rate of acidity. In Ireland we never get such quality and freshness. For the newcomer, the taste and fragrance are a revelation.
Traditionally, harvesting in Italy begins on November 1st and finishes the week before Christmas when the pressing mills shut. Our team, including some Belgians, started in the olive groves each morning armed with little wicker panniers, or cistellas, around our waists and walking sticks for hooking down the branches. We worked from sunrise to sunset with a break for lunch at one o'clock. Systematically stripping each tree, we moved from the top terraces downwards, emptying the baskets into crates holding approximately 20 kilos, which yields up to three litres of oil. Ideally the fruit is pressed the same day. As we picked, Luc pruned.
Luc and Brigitte have about 800 trees, some laden with olives, others with sparse, recalcitrant fruit too high to trap. It became satisfying to find the plentiful ones and steadily denude them. "Walk three times around each tree before you leave it," commanded Brigitte, whose sharp eyes, I couldn't help thinking, looked just like small black olives. During the day we marvelled at the views, heard the distant cries of wild boar hunters deep in the forests and the peal of church bells echoing across the valley. Sunsets were breathtaking. It was immensely peaceful - "time out of mind harvesting", as Patience Gray once described it. The road from the farm to Cortona is narrow and precipitous, better on foot than by car. On the way we looked forward to dinner served by our hosts, both accomplished and inventive cooks, who make use of wild and local seasonal ingredients. Memorable offerings included a carrot salad with garlic, lemon juice, oranges and olive oil; chestnuts baked in a bed of rock salt and a medlar tart. Parasol mushrooms were abundant and fried with olive oil and butter, were a meal in themselves. One evening we had small green fruits with fragrant and delicate flesh, a special gift from a neighbour; I later discovered they were pineapple guavas or feijojas.
There are many varieties of olives; the most popular in Tuscany have names like pendolino, leccino and frantoio. With an average life span of 500 years, their longevity is legendary; many trees can live up to 1500 years. "You plant for your grandchildren", goes the saying. Homer called the harvest "liquid gold", but the trickle from the first cold pressing is a vivid emerald green with an unmistakable aroma of grassy earth. Tuscan oil is peppery, spicy; oils from further south are sweeter, softer. The mills keep the pulp of the first pressing and press again, each pressing yielding oil of higher acidity and lesser quality which is mostly what we get in Ireland. Unlike wine, oil does not improve with age and is at its peak in the first month after pressing, though it can keep for a year. Luc and Brigitte are understandably proud of their extra virgin oil which, at 0.1 per cent, has the lowest acidity in the whole region.
Italians place great value on the new season's harvest. On a trip to Cortona one evening we checked out a beautiful fabric shop (the area is as famous for textiles as for wine and oil). When the shopkeeper heard we were handpicking olives, he was so impressed that he asked us to inform our hosts that he would swap some of his handmade fabrics for their handmade oils. A fair exchange, we thought, like our free board and lodging and a complimentary litre to take home. As an earthy and satisfying way of experiencing Italy, who'd be a summer tourist after that?