Our first curation is deliberately narrow: three producers, three positions. Each bottle is an argument we are willing to defend in public.
Viragì
Polifemo DOP Monti Iblei
Chiaramonte Gulfi, Sicily · 500 ml
The name is already an argument: Viragì is the initials of Vivera, Ragusa and Gurrieri, three friends who in 2007 folded their families' groves on the Monti Iblei into a single project. And a single cultivar: Tonda Iblea, in purity. The choice almost no one makes. No blend, no cautious portfolio. What comes out smells of green tomato and herbs, with a bitterness that is decided but held in balance. Identity by subtraction: a young project that chose to be one thing, all the way.
Lucia Iannotta
Monocultivar Itrana
Sonnino, Lazio · 500 ml
A single cultivar, Itrana, grown in purity on dry-stone terraces above Sonnino and cold-milled in the family frantoio. In 2008 Lucia Iannotta took over the estate her grandfather, a miller, founded in 1952, in a place that did not expect a woman at its head. Her oil tastes of tomato, artichoke and almond, bitterness and pepper held in balance, and proves what Rome is slow to admit: great Lazio oil grows an hour from the capital.
Mate
Trasparenza Marina
Istria, Croatia · 500 ml
At seventy-five, near the end of the century, Mate Vekić set his first olive tree into Istrian land that history had emptied, and built a mill facing the sea. He had learned oil in Tuscany, and brought its cultivars, Frantoio, Leccino and Pendolino, to the red soil of the Adriatic: Tuscan grammar, Adriatic accent. Today the estate is in Aleksandra's hands. His blend, Trasparenza Marina, is as limpid as its name promises: fresh, clean, an oil we'd picture over a plate of fish. The Adriatic has two shores, and quality asks for no passport.