the olive years
Part 1: 5 recent moments
1. Bouncing on the back of it, I’m surprised that the shovel doesn’t actually like to dig. It feels like the wooden handle is straining, or even about to break. Within the first few minutes I can feel hotspots on my fingers forming and the next truck full of young trees arrives. And it’s not even 8 am.
2. ‘So, children, which one is winy’? We’re in the great hall, sitting at long tables grouped in twos, each of us with three small glasses, a knife and a green apple. No one speaks, but it’s obvious that it’s not obvious to any of us. ‘Think of fermented grape juice’, the professor says, his voice revealing that that is supposed to be the hint we all need. Still no one says anything and all 60 of us smell the glasses again. None of the glasses smell like wine, not remotely. And we still have three hours left tonight. Several have spouses out waiting in the parked cars, the discussions on the long rides home wondering if the next 4 months will end up really worth it.
3. ‘What about Tesco brand’, asks Lisa from Liverpool. ‘Or Kirkland’, says John from Oregon. ‘I buy mine from the balsamic and olive oil store and it comes out of giant stainless steel kegs’, says Stacy from Germany. They all start talking all at once and it’s clear that I’ve lost them and that they are looking for safe brands sold at the places that they already shop versus are willing to change their shopping habits.
4. It takes me a few hours to process what Lidia told me over the phone, that she actually liked ‘all three bottles’. Acid squirts in my stomach as I write on the chalkboard, pretending that nothing has happened. She should have seen only one bottle, hers. When I call her she says that yes, there are multiple stacked pallees of colourful bottles and she says that she’ll wait if I can come in the next hour and pick them up. They are on pallets that need forklifts to move. She’s 4 hours away, I’m standing in front of the students in Lecce and it’s only day 2 of a 5 day course.
5. ‘Don’t do the math, don’t do the math, don’t do the math’, I tell myself as I listen to our graphic designer tell me the opposite of what our webmaster just said in regards to the three-lettered file suffix that I’ve never heard of before. We’ve been bouncing emails and phone messages between Italy and India for the last 3 hours, the frustration audibly growing inside of each of us. I hang up and realise that I was just paying 30 Euro, plus 50 Euro, plus 30 Euro per 40 Euro an hour for three hours of the soul-crushing technical talk. When all the messages finally stop I feel relived until I remember that with the time zones that all of this will likely resume tomorrow morning.
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To say that we’ve dedicated ourselves to extra virgin olive oil this last year would be an understatement. We’re producing it, bottling it, marketing it, with each of the bottles a beautifully-illustrated digital lesson on the subject.
But as a school we’re also buying and replanting some of the 10,000,000 dead trees, trying to be part of the solution rather than just contributing another set of hands to ring. One tree for each student that came to us this year
Follow along as you’ll meet all of these people, the producers, farmers, students, pickers and professors.
To receive a case of our new oil, simply respond to this email.
Or write us. Info@awaitingtable.com
Our three oils are 25 Euro a bottle, plus shipping, sent in cases of 12. (4 bottles of coratina, 4 of peranzana, 4 of favalosa).
Hurry if you’d like it in time for Christmas.
Silvestro Silvestori
Sommelier dell’Extra Vergine FIS 2022
Owner of The Awaiting Table Cookery School and The Awaiting Table at the Castle in Puglia.