Vulsini soils
Deposits of the Vulsini volcanic district: loose, free-draining soils rich in potassium. It is the foundation of nearly every great oil of Lazio.
The groves are in one place, and it is worth saying so precisely: località Santa Lucia, a strip of land running north to south a kilometre and a half from Canino. Uphill it borders the ruins of Castellardo; downhill it looks onto the Timone stream, just above the Pellico waterfall.
In wine it would be called a cru: a portion of territory with characters of its own, distinct from the rest of the appellation. In olive oil almost nobody declares it, and almost everybody blends lots arriving from different municipalities.
We name the locality because here it makes a difference. The soils are volcanic — loose, free-draining, rich in skeleton and potassium: the tree suffers just enough to concentrate phenols without going into water stress. The Timone gorge, a few hundred metres below, keeps the valley floor ventilated and softens late frosts.
The sea is some fifteen kilometres away: contained temperature swings, long autumns. It means choosing the day of the harvest rather than submitting to it — which, for an early-picked oil, is everything.
And then there is what lies beneath. At the northern edge of the estate stand the ruins of Castellardo, a castle first recorded in 1140 in a bull of Innocent II and razed by Canino in the fifteenth century; under its stones, a rural settlement of the third century BC. Four generations are what we can document with a name. Cultivating here, on the other hand, has been going on far longer.
Vulci
Some ten kilometres west, where the Timone is already the Fiora: one of the great Etruscan cities, brought to light by the prince of Canino, Luciano Bonaparte.
The Timone
A tributary of the Fiora. Below the grove it cuts the tufa and drops seven metres: that is the Pellico waterfall. Its waters once drove the Ferriera ironworks.
Castellardo
A medieval castrum recorded in a bull of Innocent II in 1140, razed by Canino in the fifteenth century. Beneath it, a rural settlement of the third century BC.