Giuseppe Dongarrá is the soul of the company. This young entrepreneur is dedicated to olive growing and moreover, deeply attached to his hearth produce and passionate about extra virgin olive oil production just as much as his ancestors; humble Sicilian farmers striving to develop, produce and safeguard this unique genetic inheritance.
This reside in his family olive grove, blooming for centuries under the Madonie’s summer sun.
In a space built by his father through years of sacrifice, originally dedicated to apply various processing techniques to locally produce seeds, there is now a laboratory to bottle high quality extra virgin olive oil.
Over the past few years, Giuseppe has further developed his skillset. He is a qualified Oil Sommelier and an expert taster of what is defined to be the Green Gold of Sicily; the good olives and good oil indeed.
Today he knows all of its characteristics, the flavours, the tastes, the colours.
Giuseppe is driven by the wish to bring to the market a product which is both rich in taste and genuine, deeply connected with the uniqueness of Sicily: an island which has been for century the intersection of multiple cultures.
THE COMPANY
The company was founded in the beginning pf 2020 by Giuseppe who collaborates with his brother Nino to bottle the extra virgin olive oil locally produced in his family estate. They are the third generation of farmers taking care of this precious family grove, working with dedication and farming according to the local methods, typical of the Madonie National Park which is a natural reserve in the heart of Sicily. While some trees are centenarian, others are younger but still producing olives in outstanding varieties, such as the very local Crasta olive which is only grown here, where the mountains reach between 2000 and 3000 ft latitude. This area located just on the board with the Messina’s province was once called Valdemone.
In their grove, Giuseppe and Nino nurture some Verdello and Nocellara plants as well as other rare varieties such as the Castelbellota Biancolilla, the more rounded Iblea olive and the Belice Nocellara. The olives are hand-picked one by one in the second half of October, making an exclusive produce. This is a relatively premature harvest which makes the oil extraordinary rich in terms of organoleptic properties. The olives are then cold-pressed in brand new mechanisms through continuous cycle process, obtaining an oil rich in polyphenol (especially owing to the Crasta olive).
The oil will then be stored in inox steel silos at set lighting and monitored temperature and injected with nitrogen.
This process is known as the blanketing technique, applied to ensure the absence of oxygen inside the silos as the oil needs to rest in set conditions to access the next stage of its journey: bottling and labelling.
