Cantasole

In the beautiful Mediterranean landscape of Puglia, our great grand father, Vincenzo De Marco planted the first olive tree in 1885, right by the sea. At that time, the women working in the fields used to live all together in our Masseria, a farmhouse next to the olive grove. Our Masseria was like a small village, with living quarters for the workers, space for the animals, a little church and even a school for the children. Each morning, these women would sing to our olive trees at sunrise. Since then, our olives have been cultivated and harvested in a joyful environment for almost two hundreds years.

In the middle of the 20th century, Nicola De Marco, Vincenzo’s son, planted even more olive trees, keeping a good eye for local varieties and respecting the biodiversity of the region. Thanks to him, more than 10.000 of our olive trees are over a hundreds years old. These trees are of 2 main local varieties: Ogliarola and Cellina di Nardò.

The harvest was still in the hands of the women working in our fields, who kept the tradition alive always singing in the olive grove.
For the last 30 years, Fabrizio de Marco, Vincenzo’s grandson, has planted 9 olive tree varieties, with our favourites being Cima di melfi, Coratina, Peranzana and even Arbequina. All these varieties, each with its own unique characteristics, allowed Fabrizio to experiment and discover the different types and qualities of extra virgin olive oil.
 

Fabrizio continued the family tradition by transmitting his passion for olive trees to his daughter, Arianna De Marco. Since 2014, Arianna has worked with Fabrizio to bring innovation to the family business and create, thanks to her family heritage, a labour of love that we call CANTASOLE.

Cantasole is full of joy and care for nature and design with a special attention to olive oil production processes and packaging. We respect the natural rotation of our olive trees and try to implement innovative processes with the goal of reusing existing materials to produce ecologically responsible products. All of this is combined with an attention for detail and design, to make sure that Cantasole brings the Mediterranean into your kitchen.

Even though our harvest has been mechanized to improve the processes used in the 19thcentury, we still work with the traditions passed down from our ancestors. We start harvesting our olives at dawn in order to preserve their quality and make sure that they never touch the ground. Our olives are immediately taken to the mill to become extra virgin olive oil within 5 hours of collection. Everyday we harvest in a joyful environment, a tradition that we worked hard to maintain, through four generations.

For our family it is important to provide only the finest extra virgin olive oil quality. This is why, for Cantasole, we select the top 10% of our all production and every year is a blend of the best olives varieties. This year (harvest 2017) we chose Coratina and Cima di melfi to look for an intense green perfume and a mild (but very present) pungency.

If you want to know more about us and the passion of our family for extra virgin olive oil, you might want to visit our land whenever you are around.