ABOUT LAVIALLA
Brief information about the Fattoria La Vialla and development of OliPhenolia:
Fattoria La Vialla is a family-run, organic-biodynamic farm and wine estate. Already a farm over two centuries ago, it was retrieved from abandon and taken into safekeeping by the Lo Franco Family in 1978. Today La Vialla uses organic and biodynamic methods to cultivate 1,600 hectares/3,954 acres of land (with the largest Demeter certified surface area in Italy) and produces its own wine, extra virgin olive oil, pecorino cheese, appetizers, sauces, pasta, vinegar, honey, biscuits and other sweet delicacies – directly from vineyard to bottle, from vegetable patch to jar.
In 2010 at the Fattoria, thanks to the support of the Famiglia Lo Franco Foundation, a project was initiated with the aim of enhancing the numerous, valuable substances contained in this olive fruit water – it was given the name “OliPhenolia®”. For olive mills this liquid, also known as “vegetation water” is usually simply seen as wastewater, but at La Vialla it has always been used as a resource: the fruit water is added to the biodynamic compost, where it matures for 6-8 months and then returns to the ground – in the form of a fertile amendment – to complete the natural cycle. But it is much more than this. Now, finally, it can also be used as a “food” once filtered and concentrated (with a simple cold-filtering process).
Every year, from mid-October to the beginning of December, there’s one place at the Fattoria where work never stops: the olive mill. Throughout the day (and night) the freshly picked olives arrive, to be pressed as quickly as possible, so as to preserve their flavour, aroma and... polyphenols. After removing the majority of the leaves (but not all of them, because they also contribute to the flavour and polyphenol load) the olives are rinsed quickly and then enter the mill. Protected from oxidation thanks to the cupola filled with nitrogen (patented by Fattoria La Vialla), they are ground between granite millstones, which slowly transform them into a thick paste.
This olive paste (a mixture of flesh, juice, stones, leaves and oil) is then centrifuged twice. The first time separates the extra virgin olive oil from the wet pomace. This wet pomace then undergoes a second, cold centrifugation, which separates the dry pomace from the water contained in the fruit (Nonna Caterina’s “acqua mora”) which is reclaimed for reuse.
OliPhenolia is extracted by filtering and concentrating this aqueous part of the olives (the olive mill waste waters or “olive fruit water”) with the use of ceramic membrane technology and reverse osmosis; solely through mechanical cold filtering, without the use of chemical solvents or heat.
This state-of-the-art method (considered a B.A.T. or Best Available Technology) was studied and elaborated with the specific intent of preserving the integrity of the delicate polyphenolic molecules, and required more than two years of research and trials by Prof. Massimo Pizzichini (ENEA) and his team, which led to a patent being filed.
Today Oliphenolia is widely sold in the entire European region.