 On the e 24th of October we've officially opened at Casafredda the 2010 Olive season; a little bit in advance than the usual, to be franc, but the weather wasn't promising anything good for the following weeks, and with over 650 threes to be "hand peeled"...well, you know! It's better being prudent.
The first week was worm and sunny, and the olive grove looked like the garden of Eden, with flowers and birds all over the place. Sometime, watching Michela moving in between of the threes made me thinking of Eva and Adam...but this is a different story, as we all perfectly know how these things generally end..:-)
By the second week the Eden picture turned drastically to the Flood one, all my adamic dreams went immediately converted in a Noahs attitude, and we went on picking olives in fits and starts in between a storm and the next one, waiting also for the fruits drying, as wet ones easily ferment and go acid...just to make it easier!
 Anyway, by the 6th of November we had the first batch (about 1.1 tons of olives) ready to go to the press, and this is always an unforgettable experience!
The "Frantoio Patrussi" is a family owned little press, only few minutes away from Casafredda; here anything has changed in the past 40 years (apart few upgrading of the machineries); my grandpa used to bring his olives there, as my papa did, and now is my turn.
The room is busy with the people waiting for their moment, and chatting about the season, the weather, the national politics, and the season again, then the weather, and the national politics responsible for the season, the weather...
Everybody comes to the press with his own "tascapane", literally brad pocket, which is a little bag filled with gourmet delicacies: homemade prosciutto, pecorino cheese, salamis, kipper, anchovies, and of course...wine! The competition for the best wine is part of the game, and connoisseur tastings go on and on and on....
 In the mean time the olives pass from the washer to the press itself: Valerio, the press owner and operator, literally applies Heraclitus' philosophy and approach to life: "everything flows"; I believe it is because of a professional bias, as he stays all day long (and some day even longer) in front of the giant endless screw, checking his beloved machine continuously turning multicoloured olives into a not easily describable brown, creamy past, and then extracting out of it the golden oil.
There is no rush in this procedure, as everything is scheduled by Valerio itself; you've just to call him a couple days in advance, when you think to have enough olives to press, and get your appointment, lets say: 8.30 am. Don't be surprised if your fruits luckily go into the press at 16.45 pm...after all, it has been a beautiful day!
 Well, at sunset we came home happy and smiling with 151 kg of superb quality, freshly pressed, flavourful extra virgin olive oil, ready to possibly become the most important ingredient of our kitchen.
The following day we're already back on the threes, as a demonstration that somewhere here in Tuscany Darwin's evolution theory doesn't work much...
November has been truly a wet month; these conditions negatively reflects in the picking, and the quality of the fruits as well; the water content particularly become higher than usual, automatically reducing the yield; the flavour instead is more delicate, without the spicy aggressiveness which is a common characteristic of the oils from this region.
On the 2nd of December we had a second batch of just over 1.5 tons ready to go, and came back home with 217 kg of EVOO.
With over 200 threes still in front of us, we're watching the sky with reverential awe.
Tramontana, the north wind, was already blowing, taking away all the clouds from heavens, and literally freezing us on the threes...honestly, this picture wasn't matching at all with the story of the global warming, and the hottest year of the century, but the best part was still on the way.
Following the foolproof advices of the village elderly, generally based on rheumatoid arthritis and other peculiar pain and sufferances, we started rushing against the majestic glaciation scene vaticinated from the most.
Michela, overconfident with the national capability to front peculiar weather conditions, decided on Thursday the 16th to drive to Livorno for a family reunion, while I was getting down from the last three.
The phone rang early Friday morning: Livorno was already covered with snow, while more was intensely falling in large flaks; all the roads were not practicable and the conditions were worsening.
In Arezzo snow started around noon, and went on uninterruptedly for 20 hours; by midnight I measured 40 cm in front of our door, and as a lonely pirate drank a bottle of wine on my own thinking about the missed opportunity of spending a romantic night under the blankets.
The scenery on Saturday morning was magnificent, and I took a walk to the local meeting point, the grocery, were most of the elderly were proudly finding justifications of their arthrosis.
 Along the road I got some pics of the olive groove, and the few forgotten fruits still on the threes. For the quantity, this snow has been compared to the " 1956 big one", pictured by movie director Federico Fellini in his Amarcord masterpiece; something really unusual for our regions.
At least temperature didn't lowered too much, as in 1985 did, and the olive haven't suffered much for the ice.
All the roads were closed; trains were not circulating; Michela, still trapped in Livorno, was making her parents happy, and not me...
I had instead the opportunity to hand clean from the leafs the last batch of olives, 1.4 tons...for the records.
On Sunday Michela managed to jump on a train, leaving the car in Livorno, and came back to "Tortuga"; on the following Tuesday the road was clean enough to delivery the olives to the press; Valerio did start his ritual; because of the extraordinary conditions,
the buzz of the participants was obviously higher than usual, and more wine was poured into the glasses, and more complains to the government for the weather conditions were made...
My turn ended twenty minutes before midnight; driving home, with 228 kg of liquid gold in the back of the truck, immerse in this moonlike scenery, I really felt the pirate in me still alive.
The 2010 olive season was closed.
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