I
Four Generations

An inheritance of land and craft

From Alberto Giorgi, 1890, to the two brothers of today.

A century, one località, the same family. The olive trees we prune today are the ones our grandfather pruned, and his father before him: the Roman numeral on the label is not a graphic flourish, it counts generations. Today the estate belongs to two brothers, Roberto and Vincenzo Giorgi.

A mature Caninese olive tree in the Santa Lucia grove
A mature Caninese — controlled ground cover, no herbicide
I
b. 1890

Alberto Giorgi

The founder, and the man who could count olives before they fell. Across the Torlonia estates — the great holding that from 1853 included the lands of Canino, bought from the heirs of Luciano Bonaparte together with the princely title — he was the one who estimated the quintals. He would walk the grove and say what it would yield: the estate built its season's accounts on that number.

It is a craft done today with drones and forecasting models, and he did it by eye. That way of looking at a tree is the oldest thing he left us.

II
b. 1927

Vincenzo Giorgi

Our grandfather. He crosses the war and the post-war years, the decades when olive growing in the Tuscia leaves subsistence behind: continuous-cycle mills arrive, bulk selling begins, the holdings widen. His is the generation that turns a kitchen garden into a farm.

What he remembered of those days was the generosity. The Americans came up through the Maremma in June 1944, and in Canino they handed out what they had: milk, chocolate, chewing gum, cigarettes. There was little at home to give back, and what went back was a flask of oil. They wanted to know what it was, so green: they had never seen oil that colour. The answer was, oil from Canino. He was seventeen, and it was the first time he heard the name of the town used to say what their oil was.

III
b. 1953

Alberto Giorgi

He carries his great-grandfather's name, and with him the estate changes scale. This is the generation of expansion: land bought, land brought back into cultivation, boundaries pushed forward until they drew the estate still visible on the map today. Livestock, horses, arable and olive grove, held together by the same hand.

At the centre, always the olive trees. In 1996 the oil of Canino is granted its Protected Designation of Origin and the territory gives itself written rules: this is the generation that chooses quality over quantity, and that plants knowing someone else will harvest.

But the greatest legacy is not what he added: it is what he refused to let go. Land is defended by staying, and he stayed.

IV
Today

Roberto and Vincenzo Giorgi

Two brothers, and a choice the previous generations could not afford: to stop at a single cultivar, to certify organic, and to put their own surname on the tin. The whole chain is ours — grove, harvest, milling, bottling.