Santa Maria, Santa Oliva!!! An oil like no other! Miceli & Sensat Santa Oliva IGP Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Wow!

 Anyone looking for a truly exceptional olive oil will undoubtedly find their search ends with Santa Oliva from Miceli & Sensat. What Paolo Miceli, Sergio Sensat, and Duccio Morozzo della Rocca have bottled here is simply incomparable.

 They impressively demonstrate that even olives, which usually yield milder oils, can be processed into highly complex and very robust olive juices. Anything but ordinary!

 At Miceli & Sensat, the Cerasuola olive variety, one of the oldest and most typical varieties of Sicily—especially in western regions like Trapani and Palermo—has been transformed into the "Santa Oliva" product. The name Cerasuola comes from the Sicilian word for cherry, "cerasa," because the ripe fruit resembles a cherry in color (and shape).

 If Cerasuola olives are harvested late (e.g., in December), the biophenol content is usually quite low. This makes the oil softer, less green and fruity, and less bitter and less pungent. Many Sicilian producers, especially those who supply their olives to cooperatives, harvest their olives late. Furthermore, slow or excessively warm extraction can significantly reduce the biophenols and completely destroy the fresh, vegetal notes. The result is a Cerasuola oil that smells like cooked lettuce, is barely bitter, and has little pungentness.

 Santa Oliva is a completely different story! Here, "green, bitter, spicy, and astringent" are the dominant notes. The oil seems like an untamed, wild entity. Mopping some up with fresh bread allows the substances (biophenols) produced from the olives' secondary plant compounds during the shredding and subsequent brief stirring of the olive paste to continue working for several minutes. It's seriously potent stuff!

 Almost 350 mg/kg of oleocanthal was found in this oil. It doesn't get any better than that!
 Oleo- comes from the Latin oleum, meaning oil. It refers to olive oil as the molecule's source. -canth- is derived from the Greek akantha (ἄκανθα), meaning thorn or prickle. It alludes to the stinging sensation in the throat experienced when consuming fresh, oleocanthal-rich olive oil. -al is the chemical ending for aldehydes and indicates that the molecule contains an aldehyde group.

 Duccio Morozzo della Rocca told us: "It is the best Cerasuola I have ever made."

 How true! We've never experienced a better one. A great oil, the likes of which you only find a few times per season.