The Evolution of Olive Harvesting in Calabria

Calabria Olives, Olive Oil, and Producers

Ciccio’s Olives Co-Founder and President Pino Pugliano recently spoke with Italian Cinema Today on the process of olive harvesting in Calabria, the conditions that make this region especially suited to olive oil production, and the methods used by our family of farmers in Italy to produce this Calabrian extra virgin olive oil.

Italian Cinema Today’s recent Cibo & Cinema feature looked at olive harvesting in Calabria by comparing the 1967 film Tempo di Raccolta, which documents a day in the life of Calabrese women working in the olive groves, with today’s methods through the eye of a modern Calabria olive grower.

While the process of gathering olives and creating olive oil has changed over the course of the decades, one thing remains: it’s extremely hard work. In this interview, Pino reflects on the days of his youth and being paid by the bucket to gather olives off of the ground, the back-breaking work that his parents did year after year to collect every ripe Carolea olive from the ancient trees flecking their expansive land, and the family preservation of traditional methods alongside the implementation of modern machinery to enable both purity and scalability.

Watch it below!