Greetings from Cortona! Greetings from Villa Bramasole!!
April 23, 2026
Dear Friends of Bramasole Olive Oil,
Greetings from Cortona! Greetings from Villa Bramasole!!
Frances and I arrived a few days ago with our two cats (Fitz and Sonny Man) and a bit more luggage than usual on a one-way ticket to Leonardo Da Vinci Airport in Rome!
Enzo was waiting for us in Arrivals, and after gathering our cats we were speeding up to Tuscany in his black Peugeot van. I always sit up front to try to jumpstart my Italian, and since I’ve known Enzo for many years, it’s easy to navigate the not-always-easy Italian landscape of language. One of our favorite subjects is, no surprise, olive oil, and I must have asked him a hundred times how many liters of extra virgin olive oil (made in Tuscany, of course), he uses in a year.
And his reply? 15 liters (the equivalent of 30 bottles of Bramasole Olive Oil!). Sounds like a lot for one person? It’s not. If you’re counting out your daily tablespoons of our oil, you should know that Enzo averages 3 tablespoons a day. When his mother was alive (she died a few years ago at age 102), he used much more. He’s been consuming the same olive oil since he was born, from the same Tuscan trees, the 300 trees his brother has been cultivating and the 400 trees his sister has in an adjacent grove.
And as Enzo was “delivering” us to Bramasole, the house we bought in 1990, I was reminded of a conversation Frances and I were having with friends before we left the USA, about nutrition. I had been reading about how extra virgin olive oil is the “nutrient key” that unlocks the nutritional potential of certain foods. For example, tomatoes. By themselves, they’re fine, but eating them with extra virgin olive oil greatly increases the absorption of lycopene, a very important antioxidant. Foods that contain Vitamin A, D, E, and K can’t release these vitamins without the inclusion of a fat, such as extra virgin olive oil. It’s a core principle of the Mediterranean Diet.
In other words, don’t drizzle. Douse!
Of course I didn’t bring this up to Enzo as he’s zipping at 90 mph up the Autostrada, without glasses, energetic and fit and strong. He’s been living the Mediterranean Diet all of his 65 years.
And a nudge that May 10 being Mother’s Day, a great gift is a case of our extra virgin olive oil. Order now to be assured it arrives by the 10th.
I’ll be reporting more on our olives soon—they haven’t even flowered yet (that comes in May).
Until then, Stammi bene, Edoardo