I spent half term in Italy, staying with some friends of my wife Polly's on their farm in Tuscany (Corzano and Paterno). The grape harvest (Vendemia) had just finished and the last of the fermented fruit were being pressed to eventually make a delicious chianti. The sweet vin santo grapes hanging on racks in darkened rooms, thickening to syrup, to be turned into 'il passito' in the new year.
The onset of cold nights had turned the vine leaves from green to gold, to burning red. The olive harvest was just starting. Nets or old parachutes spread out around the gnarled trunks and the olives combed from the tree.
It's a beautiful sight, every few hundred yards along the road ether in an orchard or in someone's back garden, stepladders nestle among olive branches and teams of people, usually in twos – one up the ladder and the other tending the fallen olives, collect the harvest.
Then off to the communal pressing plant (best done within six hours of picking), hang around for a couple of hours, then home proudly with your jug of olive oil. It's a lovely thought that all over those Tuscan hills, farmers and families, the young and old are all making their own oil, because that's what they do in November. Delicious… and beautiful.
