Olive Harvest

Had to drop you a line to let you know about the latest dining experience Gasparini style. The countryside's been a blur of activity lately, what with the olives coming to maturity. Folk up ladders with their plastic claws combing through leafy canopies, popping off the olives to be caught in nets cast about below.

The Gasparini's have more or less a hundred trees and it's a full weeks work for Luciano, Graziella, and Seconda, Mario when he's mobile, plus various members of the extended family and the occasional volunteer. So far, they haven't finished yet, they've gathered over a ton, can you believe. Luciano dropped by last Sunday to ask for a ride in the pick-up with six quintali (600 kilos) to the olive mill in Loro Piceno. The pick-up's maximum load capacity is half a ton so we were a tad overloaded but made our uneventful way after dark. You'd have loved the sight of all the old boys hanging out, airing their views while waiting patiently for their olives to be transformed into liquid gold. The mill's running 24 hours at present, the air inside a heady perfume and the floors as slippy as an ice rink's. This type of mill, where they cold press the olives, is fast disappearing, the more modern way, an automated, continuous process has done away with the manual labour. Although undoubtedly more profitable for the operator its processes make sacrifices in the finished quality. The old-fangled mills grind the berries to a pulp, the pulp is then pressed without any heat being applied, then a simple centrifuge separates the oil from any water and impurities. Only a slight evolution of the way it's been done for millenia. The result is the very finest cold-pressed, extra-virgin, olive oil, also organic in Luciano's case. Luciano's batch would be milled at around five in the morning so we didn't hang about for too long but once returned home he duly set his alarm for four o'clock a.m. to be back there for his turn. And so it was that yesterday he popped by again to invite me round for supper.

A homely scene, Graziella busying herself with food and table preparation, Luciano perched comfortably in front of the open fire toasting bread and pork escalopes over the wood embers. It was a simple supper. The oil poured over toast with a little salt is the traditional way to savour the new season's bounty. There are variations, rub a cut garlic clove on your toast first, there's salt laced with chilli pepper for the more adventurous and there were slices of toast with sausage spread over for variety, cooked over the same oak embers. Meat, and salad from the veg plot, to follow. With my limited vocabulary and inadequate imagination I'm unable to convey the perfection of the dining experience. The company. The setting. The olive oil; nothing more than the sun and rains and the passage of time, no chemicals or fertilizer. Hand picked by the last of a breed and milled with respect the old fashioned way. Labour intensive and inefficient the process may be, but the product is beyond compare. For a minute I wondered what price you'd pay in Belgravia or Knightsbridge for a meal such as this and then realised it never could be re-created.