Frantoio Manestrini

The story so far

Egidio Manestrini opened the mill in Soiano del Lago in 1960, on the Brescia shore of Lake Garda, in the Valtènesi hills. The ground he built on carries older history: a Franciscan convent dedicated to San Rocco stood on the same site from the mid-1300s until the late 1700s, and traces suggest olives were pressed there even before the friars arrived. Manestrini worked the moraine hills with Frantoio, Moraiolo, Leccino and Casaliva trees, the same varieties that go into Garda Bresciano oil. His daughter Nicoletta grew up around the presses and later trained as a professional taster; she runs the estate today, still harvesting by hand across those slopes. Between 1998 and 2008 the mill was a repeat finalist at the national Ercole Olivario competition, and at the Los Angeles County Fair's Olive Oil competition it took second place in 2003, 2004 and 2006 before winning first in 2005. The old convent grounds now hold an oleoteca alongside the mill.

From the public record: manestrini.it · lagodigarda.com · olitaly.it

The Adriatic ancients

From a Pag Island grove of eighty thousand wild-grafted trees to a single trunk still hand-picked every October, the Adriatic keeps its ancient olives in active use.

On the northern tip of Pag Island, the Olive Gardens of Lun cover some 24 hectares with roughly 80,000 trees, most of them wild Olea oleaster grafted with cultivated wood centuries ago. Two specimens within the gardens carry names of their own: one attributed to around 2,000 years, confirmed by DNA as a single continuous tree, and a second put at about 1,600 years that still yields up to 300 kilograms of fruit. The cooperative Maslinarska zadruga Lun presses and sells the oil. The gardens sit inside a 23.6-hectare botanical reserve, the wider etno-zone protected since 1975, though not on Croatia's UNESCO tentative list.

Across the water in Brijuni National Park, a single tree on Veliki Brijun island was radiocarbon-dated by Zagreb's Ruđer Bošković Institute in the 1960s to roughly 1,600 years. It is still hand-picked every October, yielding about 30 kilograms of fruit that renders down to some 4.1 kilograms of oil, tested at 0.11 per cent free acidity and a peroxide value of 1.95. Storm damage from the 1970s was repaired with concrete, and a 2017 effort to brand the oil commercially with the University of Zagreb and the Palunko mill has yet to produce a settled retail line.

South along the coast, near Mirovica between Bar and Ulcinj, Stara Maslina was tested by Istanbul University's Forestry Faculty in 2015, which put its age at 2,240 years from tissue and growth-ring analysis; rounder figures of 2,242 to 2,250 circulate in the press. The tree carries a cultivar called Žutica and was declared a natural monument in either 1957 or 1963; sources disagree on which. Admission is charged at the gate, at a nominal rate with a concession; gates open 08:00 to 18:00. Concrete paving around its base was found in 2023 to trap water and cause dieback; drainage work has since brought new shoots. No bottle carries the tree's own name, but Bar producers working the same Žutica groves, among them Barsko Zlato and Uljara Lučka, sell commercially close by.

Istria supplies the region's working mills. At Vodnjan, Chiavalon presses five local varieties, Buža and Istarska bjelica among them, into ranges including Romano and Ex Albis, including an organic half-litre. OIO Vivo, between Pula and Vodnjan, works 60 hectares and about 15,000 trees with its own tasting room.

The dossier for an Adriatic lot names the island or coastal comune of origin, the grafted cultivar, and, where testing exists, the radiocarbon or ring-count reading behind the tree's attributed age.