The New Glocal
Photos and words by Katie McKnoulty
While this is the same picking scene you see all around Italy this time of year, after the grape harvest but before mushroom and truffle hunting season, these particular olives are destined for a slightly different course.
"In the supermarkets and, in the States, even in the gourmet stores, it's really rare to find (olive oil) products that come from one single farm.”
Francesco’s vision is to produce olive oil where the consumer pays the same price, but gets a top, ultra-premium olive oil from an 800-tree farm.
The trees are nurtured, organically, year-round by Francesco himself. Once picked with care, early and green, they are rushed to the mill to be cold-pressed into oil within 24 hours of picking to ensure freshness.
All this care and attention results in olive oil with a strong flavour all its own. I’ve learned since living here in Italy that this is the secret to Italian cooking – good quality olive oil with its own flavours makes simple dishes taste incredible.
Maraviglia’s direct-to-consumer model puts a new spin on an old idea.
Francesco referred to it as "Glocal": a localised, “mini-farm” product and business selling directly to a very international audience via online channels.
Here in Italy, at least away from the big cities, they’ve been doing this direct-to-consumer thing since forever. Italians have their local winemaker, their ironworker, their shepherd who makes the good cheese, their butcher who raises his own animals. But the reach of these makers usually ends with the local area.
"They're like 80-year-old or 60-year-old guys that make an olive oil that is special. And they probably kiss every olive before picking it but they have no clue how to sell it. Or maybe they have their own channels of sales through the years that they built through word of mouth, but it's a local audience."
Because most of us don’t have our own direct ‘person’ to go to, we end up buying low-quality, industrial products from supermarket brands. But the modern world is beginning to work up an appetite for something real. We want to buy the good stuff, straight from the good people who made it. And with the internet, this is becoming more and more possible.
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