About Us

About 6 months after we moved to Tuscany in 2005, we experienced our first olive harvest.  That moment would change how we look at olive oil forever.  The olive oil we tasted at the olive oil mill is radically different than the flabby, tired oil you can get in your local grocery store, or even that "special" expensive olive oil that we used to get from our local Italian deli.  What the Tuscans serve in November and December has an amazing strong, fruity, peppery, non-oily taste that we hadn't ever experienced before.  The more I learned about and tasted the olive oil in Italy near olive harvest time convinced me that I had to introduce Americans to this amazing, healthy product and help share with people what the "real" stuff is like.

We tried a test shipment in 2006 and it worked a little too well - we were sold out in just over a week.  That started the hunt for the perfect olive oil to bring back to the United States.  In Tuscany much of the olive oil is made on a small scale for a single family and they use whatever they make during the year, so it took us 4 years to find what I think is the best olive oil in the world. 

Working with our good friends Sebastian and Megan of DelBrenna Jewelry we found a local farmer who is farming organically, harvesting early, and is working with trees that date back to 800 A.D.  It was a match made in heaven.  Together we pressed and bottled that first harvest, air shipping it back to the USA, garnering many raving reviews from our customers and our first Silver award in the Los Angeles International Extra Virgin Olive Oil competition.

We air ship back our "Nuovo" olive oil within weeks of the harvest so our customers in the USA can experience that same amazingly strong green taste that got us so hooked on fresh olive oil.  With the Nuovo olive oil on your table within a month of harvest, it has a taste, smell and healthiness that really can't be matched elsewhere.  Because it is so fresh, there will be little bits of olive that eventually settle to the bottom of the bottle.

We also have our "Tuscan" olive oil available year-round.  This olive oil has been allowed to settle out in stainless steel tanks, protected from the air, light and heat and because we don't use air freight is available at more affordable price.

In 2011 we visited Modena to see if we could find the perfect balsamics to introduce to the world.  We ended up tasting over 200 balsamics, working our way through the Acetaia of Modena.  We finally found a family owned farm who have been making balsamic vinegar for over 110 years in the traditional method.  These balsamic vinegars are a world apart from the normal caramel-colored, artificially flavored, sugar infused balsamic on the store shelves in the US.  Two simple ingredients - wine grape juice and wine vinegar.  That's it!  In the fall of 2011 we brought back the balsamics and some of them sold out within weeks.

This is all part of our ethos here at L'Arte dell'Olivo - bring back  fresh, authentic foods from Italy , making sure to keep it as natural and close to the source as possible.  We want to make available to discerning customers the foods that have, for the most part, been kept for the Italians themselves, opening up a world of gastronomic excitement.

We stand behind our products 100%.  If for ANY reason you're dissatisfied with our products, please take the time to let me know and I promise we'll make it right.  I personally think that our products are the most interesting food items I've ever run across and I want you to feel the same.

Cheers,

Keith von Barkenhagen