(About)

A gang of foodies with a passion for nature and getting lost in dinners

Olente is a collective: a cook turned farmer, a designer-gardener, an actual agronomist (for good measure), and a rotating cast of friends who owe somebody a favour.

We left the cities to become stewards of the land, helping recover olive fields that were abandoned into organic, lush groves.

We don't know what we're doing,
but we're doing it with our hearts open and our cheeks aching from laughter.

Hands stripping olives from a branch against the sky
Picked green
Early October
Half the oil, all of the flavour
Two of us riding the front loader of a borrowed tractor through the grove
Enea being a model on Luca's big trunk
Two of the collective working the harvest machine under a brick lattice
The machine, Luca, and Leo. The manual, no one has ever seen it.
Olive trees on dry, stony Maremma ground at golden hour
The inconvenient yet excellent lands of Maremma <3
A family-style supper seen from above: prawns, salad, bread and half-empty glasses
Lunch breaks running for three hours because life’s too short
The first pour of green gold, what a moment
Thank goodness it was sunny in November
Dinners are serious business for us
Chaaaaaarge!!
Hands stripping olives from a branch against the sky
Picked green
Early October
Half the oil, all of the flavour
Two of us riding the front loader of a borrowed tractor through the grove
Enea being a model on Luca's big trunk
Two of the collective working the harvest machine under a brick lattice
The machine, Luca, and Leo. The manual, no one has ever seen it.
Olive trees on dry, stony Maremma ground at golden hour
The inconvenient yet excellent lands of Maremma <3
A family-style supper seen from above: prawns, salad, bread and half-empty glasses
Lunch breaks running for three hours because life’s too short
The first pour of green gold, what a moment
Thank goodness it was sunny in November
Dinners are serious business for us
Chaaaaaarge!!
Hands stripping olives from a branch against the sky
Picked green
Early October
Half the oil, all of the flavour
Two of us riding the front loader of a borrowed tractor through the grove
Enea being a model on Luca's big trunk
Two of the collective working the harvest machine under a brick lattice
The machine, Luca, and Leo. The manual, no one has ever seen it.
Olive trees on dry, stony Maremma ground at golden hour
The inconvenient yet excellent lands of Maremma <3
A family-style supper seen from above: prawns, salad, bread and half-empty glasses
Lunch breaks running for three hours because life’s too short
The first pour of green gold, what a moment
Thank goodness it was sunny in November
Dinners are serious business for us
Chaaaaaarge!!
Hands stripping olives from a branch against the sky
Picked green
Early October
Half the oil, all of the flavour
Two of us riding the front loader of a borrowed tractor through the grove
Enea being a model on Luca's big trunk
Two of the collective working the harvest machine under a brick lattice
The machine, Luca, and Leo. The manual, no one has ever seen it.
Olive trees on dry, stony Maremma ground at golden hour
The inconvenient yet excellent lands of Maremma <3
A family-style supper seen from above: prawns, salad, bread and half-empty glasses
Lunch breaks running for three hours because life’s too short
The first pour of green gold, what a moment

( Drag, scroll, wander )

Meet the people and the stories behind the oil

Olive trees on dry, stony Maremma ground at golden hour
An open palm holding a handful of coarse, olive-brown grit

Maremma: the troubled farmlands of Tuscany.

Clay, loam and limestone in pockets sitting close to one another, which is inconvenient to farm yet excellent to taste.

Hot days, cold nights, and sea air that comes up the valley every evening. The oil comes with the spiciness Tuscany is known for, and with an earthiness most of the region never shows.

An abandoned olive grove at night, turning back into woodland

(Sadly)

Italy is losing its olive trees to nobody in particular. 200,000 hectares of Italian olive grove are abandoned.

It isn’t drought and it isn’t disease. It’s demographics. The people who planted these trees are in their eighties now. Their children have jobs in cities. The fruit still arrives every October, falls into the grass, and the grove quietly turns back into woodland.

Nearly 20% of the olive groves in Italy are completely abandoned.

Another 300,000 get the bare minimum.

Only half the country’s olive land is cared for and productive, out of 1.1 million hectares.

What we do, beyond the oil

We’d rather cook for you than send you a cardboard cutout.

Get in touch

Tastings

Alla Toscana: bread, oil, salt, nothing else. We bring somebody who was on picking olives in October and can answer any question about it.

Pop-ups

A long table and a fixed menu. We cook, people eat. Oh yeah, of course we eat too. Paired with natural wine from a partner vineyard, it has never failed to get people glowing.

Recipes

Real people with a real face, and the joy to share their story and the recipes that came with them.

Harvest

Come and pick with us in October. Bring your friends, bring your cook, bring gloves.