Toscano

Appearance & taste

Toscano is green to golden yellow and changes colour over time. It has a light to intense fruity aroma of green or ripe olives, almonds, other ripe fruit, artichokes or green leaves. The taste is bitter, and on the palate it is noticeably pungent. Free acidity is at most 0.45 g per 100 g of oil.

The eight sub-areas have their own descriptions: the oil from Seggiano is golden, lightly to medium fruity and bitter. Oils from the Colline Lucchesi and the Lunigiana are golden yellow with green tones and mild. The oil of the Colline di Arezzo is intense green to yellow, medium to intensely fruity with lightly to moderately bitter notes; that of the Colline Senesi green to yellowish green with a light to medium bitterness. All are noticeably pungent. The label gives the year the olives were harvested; terms such as “fine”, “scelto”, “selezionato” or “superiore” are not permitted.

Production

The oil comes from olives of over 30 varieties, alone or blended, including Frantoio, Leccino, Moraiolo, Pendolino, Maurino and Olivastra Seggianese, and from other varieties in the Tuscan regional register of native plant material. Growing, harvesting, extraction and bottling take place in the area.

The trees are mostly farmed extensively, with little fertiliser and few plant protection products; diseases and olive flies usually do little damage. The harvest starts early and usually lasts one to one and a half months. The olives are picked directly from the tree; gathering them from the ground is not permitted. They then go straight to one of the around 400 oil mills spread across Tuscany, so that even small quantities can be processed quickly.

Origin & history

Tuscany lies at the northern limit of olive growing. The trees therefore bear little, and the fruit does not ripen fully; the specification attributes the particularly fruity oil to this. Over 90 % of the olive groves lie in hill and mountain areas, and the olive trees shape the Tuscan hill landscape.

As early as 1318, the “Statute of the Oil Merchants” with 86 articles regulated the profession in what was then the Florentine territory; oil merchants had to be entered in a professional register. At the end of the 16th century the policies of the Medici promoted olive growing, and in the 17th century the division of large estates into sharecropping farms did the same; in the 18th century it held a key economic position. Since 1982 the producers have been united in the regional consortium for Tuscan olive oil; in 1997 Toscano was recognised as a protected geographical indication.