Phases of Production

The peasant culture has always had to do with the natural cycles of the land and with its processings, throughout the seasons that, with their different rituals, stress and characterize the time of the year.

Even the cultivation of the olive tree and the production of the extra virgin olive oil has to follow its own procedures and precise rituals and every single stage is determinant for the good quality of the oil.

The virtue of our oil, besides the excellent techniques of cultivation from which it comes from, which is known to be one of the best, comes mainly from the long experience with which we follow all of the productive cycle. We go from stage to stage with extreme care and immense passion, to guarantee that on your table you'll have an absolutely genuine and excellent product.

Cultivation ¬

The first treatment is for the plant and its needs. A good PRUNING is necessary, to have a good proliferation of the fruits of our tree. It is for this that on our young trees we carry out the formation prunings, to give them a good shape, then kept on the matured tree with the production prunings. The rule is that the branches of the tree are light, exposed to the sun and that air circulates in between them. Like our grandfathers used to say: "It must be possible to see a thrush fly in between the branches".

Let's even pay attention to the plowing of the land, that we do more than once a year at different depths to eliminate the infesting vegetation under the rich branches and to store rain water for the autumnal period.

Harvest ¬

The optimal level of maturation of our olives is when the "INVAIATURA" starts; the "invaiatura" is when the peel of the fruit starts to change colour and it becomes darker with little clear spots on it. It is very important if you pick them from the tree at this stage for the high quality of our oil because it guarantees a low level of acidity and an excellent and tasty aroma.
We collect and we select the most healthy olives at the right level of maturation, directly from the tree, without damaging the fruit and the tree.

Transformation ¬

After the harvest the olives are turned into oil in about 12 hours. The process of the transformation must start so soon after the picking since it is determinant for the olive to guarantee the initial level of acidity and then to mantain the taste and the freshness of the fruit just picked. Thanks to the existence of the oil-mill built right on the field of our olive trees, the olives can be quickly SELECTED AWAY FROM THE LEAVES AND WASHED from dirt and stones and then on to the following stages that transform high quality olives into a unique oil: the extra virgin olive oil Agrolio.

In our factory we still have the old family oil-mill. Like they used to do in the past, our olives are SQUEEZED AT A COLD TEMPERATURE, the best way to prevent a damaging overheating of the squeezed paste and also to guarantee the mantainance of the organolettic properties of the olive. In a large circular basin made of stone the olive's pulp is squeezed and squashed by thick round bulks made of granite.
The paste passes then on to a machinery with a continuous cycle that will start the other processes of transformation, always in cool places with an optimal temperature ( not more than 28 C) in order to protect the qualities of the product and in constantly controlled sanitary conditions.
The paste that we get from the squeezing, "frangitura" goes then through the process of the "GRAMOLATURA": it is the process in which the water is separated from the oil throughout the help of shovels that continuosly rotate. From the "gramola" the two components pass then on to the DECANTER: the CENTRIFUGAL FORCE causes then the water and the oil to move in different directions, this happens also because of the different specific weight of the teo elements. Therefore the oil is separated from the remaining impurities throughout a system of NATURAL FILTRATION, without adding any chimical dissolvents.

Bottling ¬

After it is extracted we ourselves carry on to the stage of bottling our oil, in elegant bottles made of a dark glass, a secure material because it is not alterable and because it prevents the light from damaging our oil. Even our STORING ROOM is closed and far away from sources of light and of heat.
Thanks to our extracting and conservating system, we are sure that our oil will mantain all of the nourishing principles, all of the organolettic qualities and the taste of a genuine and natural product and we are certain that the oil that arrives to your kitchen table is the same one that comes from the country of the Agresti family, today like one hundred years ago.