Travel Stories: In Search of Good Olive Oil

The woman behind the counter pauses when my friend Francesco asked the question, "do you have a local olive oil for sale in this supermarket?" She shakes her head in disgust and replies, "no, there's no good olive oil here." She then turns to her colleague, who's helping an elderly woman choose some cheese and asks "where can you find good olive oil nearby?" And, almost in unison, they exclaim an unintelligible name (later I'll find out it's Frantoio Feliziani) and they begin to rattle off complicated driving directions in unison. "Go to the roundabout, turn right, then go to the end of the street...do you need us to write that down for you?" Francesco shakes his head and says no, and I just hope he was paying attention. And off we went in the car in search of a nameless frantoio. What's a frantoio, you ask? Don't worry, you'll quickly learn (as I did) that this is the place where olive oil dreams are made.

We drove and drove. I had given up hope, there's no way he actually paid enough attention to remember those instructions. And then suddenly, he stops the car in front of what appared to be a large farm house with a tiny unassuming folding sigh that read "olio, vini di Montefalco, venditá." We hopped out of the car and wandered through an archway into a quiet courtyard where some men with purpose were hard at work on farm equipment. A timid person would have assumed that this was no place for regular people to wander in off the street and buy olive oil. Where was the store? Francesco, however, knocked on a door marked "uffico," entered, and re-emerged with an older gentleman who was happy to sell us as much olive oil as we could stuff in our car.

He led us through the courtyard, past the crates of olives, machines, pressing machines and into a room with huge vats of oil. We stood mesmerized as he poured us 5 litres of a warmly colored golden green liquid straight from the vat. He asked us if we'd like to try some and have a bruschetta. With little hesitation and wide eyes, we decided, "of course." While our bread was toasting, he led us through the old pressing room (over 200 years old) and told us the history of the place and proudly asked us to guess where he was in the photo that hung on the wall from 1950s. He pointed out a large cylindrical drum in the corner and asked us to guess what it was. "Is it for coffee?" "Yes!" he exclaimed "it's one of the original expresso machines." Looking at this metal dome, a few feet high with countless knobs, pipes and nozzles, I quickly realized that making a tiny cup of coffee was no small task many years ago.

We returned to have our bruschette and our tour guide bid us farewell. We snacked and watched the frantoio at work. Men moving crates of olives back and forth. Tiny olive oil trucks being filled to carry the oil elsewhere. A tiny two-doored car filled to the brim with empty olive oil tins to be filled.

As I let the flavors of olive oil pass over my tongue, I thought to myself that never would I have imagined that a trip to a budget supermarket in Spoleto, a simple idea, and an innocent question would have lead to one of the most memorable food experiences of my life.

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More on frantoio and Umbrian olive oil:
Umbria Lovers (two bloggers I wish I had known about before I visited Spoleto) has a few great posts on their recent visit to a frantoio. Read more about the history of olive oil, the pressing of olive oil(with a great photo slideshow of the process) and the tasting of olive oil (with an educational and entertaining video.)

Deborah of Italian Food Forever wrote some great posts on her first Umbrian olive harvest. -part 1- -part 2-

Katie Parla harvested her own olives to press in November. Read more about her experience here.

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Frantoio Feliziani

Address: Viale Marconi, 532 Spoleto (PG)
Tel & Fax: (0039) 0743 26.04.88
Website: http://www.feliziani.it
Map: