Somewhere along the way, olive oil stopped tasting like anything.
We grew up with the opposite.
On the table, not in the pantry.
Olive oil became a fat, a cooking utility, a health checkbox. A flat, anonymous bottle at the back of the cupboard.We grew up with the opposite of that. Oil on the table, poured on everything, the thing that made the food taste like someone cared.
Two cousins, one table.
Tommaso grew up in Tuscany, in a family that has been making olive oil for three generations. Every November the mill runs and the whole village smells like it. The first oil of the year comes out cloudy and bright green, and everyone stands around eating it on bread, still warm.
Luca went back to that table every year, then built a life in New York and watched the American shelf drift further and further from it.
We started Casa Virgin because we could not find that oil here. Not the bottle, the feeling. So we started bringing it over ourselves.
Fresh olive oil makes flavorful food. Four rules keep ours fresh.
All olives grown, harvested and milled in Italy.
One harvest, never mixed with older oil.
Cold extracted, never refined.
Every lot tasted before it earns the label.
Fresh oil bites a little.
That is the polyphenols. Older oil goes quiet.
We rely taste before anything else. Only Italian olives. One harvest, never mixed with older oil. Cold extracted, never refined. If a lot does not taste peppery and green, it does not get our name on it.
We set that bar for ourselves, and we hold it.
Made to be tasted.
Three drizzling oils, each made for a different moment. Spicy for pizza night. Riserva for everything else. Truffle for potatoes and eggs.
Use them twice. Once to cook, once to finish. The first pour makes the dish. The second one makes it yours.
“Fresh ingredients make flavorful food. That is the whole idea.”
Luca & Tommaso, Founders (& Cousins)
