Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Fruity and supple, with a soft peppery kick

Full in the mid-mouth, long on the finish.

Use it to dress a salad, drizzle over pasta and mains, roast or stew vegetables, bake an irresistibly aromatic olive oil cake — or adorn, with sea salt, a chocolate mousse or ice cream. A versatile gastronomic crowd-pleaser.

Around 800 olive trees — of the local Cordovil, Verdeal, Carrasquenha and Moleirinha varieties — grow in 4 hectares of 50-to-100-year-old groves. The Douro’s arid climate, scant rainfall and mineral-rich schist concentrate the fruit’s flavours, which we harvest in late October or early November, when the olives are fully ripe (Italy generally picks earlier — hence the greener, more intense spice of its olive oils): a few good whacks of the branches with long bamboo sticks — don’t worry, the trees don’t mind — and it rains olives.

The oil is cold-extracted at a local organic mill and settled before bottling — cold extraction keeps all the delicate aromatics, vitamins and antioxidant goodness that heat would take away.