Zuccardi Arauco Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil 50cl

Description

Zuccardi Arauco Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) is a single-variety extra virgin olive oil made by the Zuccardi family from 100% organic Arauco olives grown at the foot of the Andes Mountains in Mendoza, Argentina, where desert conditions are ideal for natural agriculture.

Arauco olives produce oils with notable freshness, notes of green grass, tomato, and artichoke. Due to its high antioxidant content, it has medium-high intensity bitterness and spice. This variety produces fresh, balanced, and complex oils.

Zuccardi Argentinian Varietal Olive Oil

Did you know that Zuccardi makes excellent olive oil as well as superb wines?

The Zuccardi Family Varietal Olive Oil project began with its first harvest in 2004. This line of Premium Extra Virgin Olive Oils now includes four of the oldest varieties in Mendoza, including the local Arauco variety, which has been present in the Americas for almost five hundred years; the other varieties are Genovesa, Picual and Coratina. They also produce an Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil Blend.

Zuccardi Arauco Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil Production

Extra virgin olive oil is the natural “juice” extracted from olives, retaining their full aromas, flavours and qualities. Aceites Varietales (Familia Zuccardi) produces it through careful, low-temperature processing to preserve these attributes.

• Olive Variety: Arauco
• Farming: Organic
• Harvesting, transport and washing: Olives are harvested at optimal ripeness for aroma and oil content. Speed is essential: the interval between picking and milling must be kept short to maintain freshness and quality. Fruit is then washed.
• Milling: Olives are sorted by origin, variety and characteristics, then ground whole into a paste.
• Separation: The paste is gently kneaded at low temperatures and for short times so oil droplets coalesce without losing natural compounds. Centrifugation separates the lighter oil from water and solids. The oil is stored in stainless-steel tanks at low temperatures.
• Filtering and storage: Fine solids are removed by filtration. The finished oil is bottled in dark glass to protect it from light.

The emphasis throughout is on minimal intervention, low temperatures and rapid handling to deliver a pure, high-quality extra virgin olive oil.

What Is Arauco?

The Arauco olive variety was introduced into South America via Peru by Spanish colonisers and Jesuit missionaries some 500 years ago. It would soon be grown throughout Chile (where it is called Criolla) and Argentina, particularly in Cuyo. Today, it has adapted supremely well to the local conditions and is considered to be native to the region and can no longer be found in the Mediterranean.

Sustainable Olive Groves

Zuccardi’s olive groves are located in the town of Fray Luis Beltrán, Maipu, where they cultivate 198 acres (80 hectares) of olive trees using an organic production system. They maintain green areas between the olive trees, biological corridors and countryside with native flora and fauna that surround the orchards. This generates an agro-ecosystem that makes it possible to practice sustainable agriculture.

Zuccardi: A Family Legacy Rooted in Engineering

Zuccardi Wines was founded by Alberto “Tito” Zuccardi, an engineer who had relocated to Mendoza from Tucumán in northwestern Argentina, where his Italian grandparents had originally settled. Working primarily on irrigation systems, a critical technology in this low-rainfall region, Zuccardi planted a vineyard in Maipú in 1963 to demonstrate his work, and in doing so, inadvertently planted the seeds of one of Argentina’s greatest wine dynasties.