At Mezzecrete, a Tuscan Estate Turns Heritage and Traceability Into Award-Winning Olive Oil

Summary

The Mezzecrete farm in the Crete Senesi region of Tuscany was estab­lished by the Mezzedimi fam­ily, who have a deep con­nec­tion to the area. The farm pro­duces organic olive oil, Olio Nece, using tra­di­tional Tuscan olive vari­eties and advanced tech­nol­ogy, with a focus on qual­ity, sus­tain­abil­ity, and pre­serv­ing the local land­scape.

The Mezzecrete farm lies in the heart of the Crete Senesi, a strik­ing area south of the Tuscan city of Siena known for its rolling clay hills, gul­lies and cliffs.

The area’s dis­tinc­tive land­scape was shaped by clay and marine sed­i­ments dat­ing to the Pliocene era, between 2.5 and 4.5 mil­lion years ago. Over time, those ancient lay­ers formed the undu­lat­ing ter­rain that now defines this part of Tuscany.

In the vil­lage of Asciano, the Mezzecrete estate extends across 260 hectares of wood­land, arable land, nat­ural truf­fle ground, vine­yard and olive groves. From that orchard, the com­pany pro­duces Olio Nece, its organic Terre di Siena PDO extra vir­gin olive oil, which earned a Gold Award at the 2026 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

“It all began with my wife Martha’s grand­fa­ther, Arturo Mezzedimi, who, at a young age, started work­ing in east­ern Africa and, as the archi­tect to the last Emperor of Ethiopia [Haile Selassie], designed major projects of insti­tu­tional and social rel­e­vance,” Patrick Zinelli told Olive Oil Times. ​“When the rev­o­lu­tion broke out, in the 1970s, he returned to Italy.”

“Originally from Siena, he main­tained a strong con­nec­tion to his home­town, for which he had a spe­cial affec­tion,” Zinelli said. ​“His love for the city, today a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and for the beau­ti­ful land­scape sur­round­ing it was passed down to his son Sergio with his wife Caterina and to his grand­chil­dren Martha and Marcello. This inspired them to even­tu­ally cre­ate a farm in the area, in a cor­ner of remark­able beauty.”

In 2002, the fam­ily estab­lished Mezzecrete, com­bin­ing ​“Mezz,” the open­ing of their sur­name and an ele­ment once used in Arturo Mezzedimi’s logo stu­dio, with ​“Crete,” a ref­er­ence to the sur­round­ing land­scape of the Crete Senesi.

The prop­erty orig­i­nally included a one-hectare olive grove. As the com­pany decided to make olive oil one of its flag­ship prod­ucts, the grove was expanded to 10 hectares and con­verted to organic pro­duc­tion.

The new plant­i­ngs were selected from tra­di­tional Tuscan olive vari­eties, includ­ing Leccino, Frantoio, Moraiolo and Pendolino, to meet the require­ments of the Terre di Siena Protected Designation of Origin.

Within hours of har­vest, the fruit is taken to Oliviera Sant’Andrea in Sinalunga, a mill equipped with advanced tech­nol­ogy designed to ensure high pro­cess­ing stan­dards.

To help con­sumers fol­low the oil’s path from grove to bot­tle and ver­ify its chem­i­cal and organolep­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics, the com­pany intro­duced a blockchain-based trace­abil­ity sys­tem acces­si­ble through a QR code on each Olio Nece bot­tle.

“I real­ized that there was use­ful infor­ma­tion we could offer con­sumers beyond what appears on the label. That is why I decided to embrace blockchain trace­abil­ity, which works like a dig­i­tal pass­port,” Zinelli said. ​“Through a QR code, con­sumers can access data such as the cer­tifi­cate issued by the Terre di Siena DOP con­trol body, the full pro­file includ­ing polyphe­nol lev­els, as well as the har­vest period and fruit yield. All these details pro­vide fur­ther assur­ance of the oil’s qual­ity and doc­u­ment each step we have taken to craft a top-tier prod­uct.”

While the com­pany relies on tech­nol­ogy to com­mu­ni­cate its com­mit­ment to qual­ity, it also remains closely tied to local tra­di­tion and the ter­ri­to­r­ial legacy that con­tin­ues to shape its iden­tity.

“To strengthen the link with the his­tory of this land, we named our oil after the name of this area in medieval times, when it formed part of the hold­ings of the nearby Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore,” Zinelli said.

A land­mark in the region, Monte Oliveto Maggiore is a major monas­tic com­plex founded in 1313, and its com­mu­nity has long main­tained a tra­di­tion of olive oil pro­duc­tion.

Zinelli said a 1383 share­crop­ping con­tract found in the monastery’s ancient library recorded that a ten­ant farmer rented olive groves from the abbey in the dis­trict of Nece. That ear­lier toponym, slightly dif­fer­ent from the cur­rent one, was later cho­sen as the name of the oil.

More recently, the com­pany revived a seven-hectare stretch of white-truf­fle ground on the prop­erty and estab­lished a two-hectare vine­yard of native grape vari­eties, includ­ing Sangiovese, Canaiolo and Vermentino.

The estate also includes a one-hectare rain-fed reser­voir used for emer­gency irri­ga­tion dur­ing peri­ods of scarce rain­fall.

“We con­verted the farm to organic, because I believe this is a fun­da­men­tal require­ment that aligns with our com­mit­ment to man­ag­ing the land sus­tain­ably,” Zinelli said.

He added that the olive trees retain a tra­di­tional plant­ing pat­tern, a delib­er­ate choice intended to respect the land­scape and pre­serve envi­ron­men­tal bal­ance.

“Working on these slopes can be demand­ing because of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the ter­rain, with its uneven­ness, which requires extra effort,” he said. ​“I believe that it is impor­tant to con­vey to con­sumers the great work and the year-round ded­i­ca­tion that go into man­ag­ing our orchards with the aim of obtain­ing a prod­uct of the high­est qual­ity.”

Zinelli said he began ded­i­cat­ing him­self fully to the com­pany in 2012, after a suc­cess­ful career in invest­ment bank­ing.

“My wife and I were expect­ing our first child, and this was a major fac­tor that con­vinced me to put my job aside, so I could be more present with them. Initially, I intended to fol­low only the real estate devel­op­ment project on the prop­erty, but then I was really drawn to olive oil pro­duc­tion,” he said. ​“It was a real enlight­en­ment. I began train­ing, becom­ing an olive oil som­me­lier and focus­ing on high-qual­ity pro­duc­tion. I lit­er­ally left bank­ing for the land, and today the joy of craft­ing excep­tional extra vir­gin olive oil, crowned by the NYIOOC awards, con­firms that this jour­ney is as reward­ing as it is mean­ing­ful.”

“We have the priv­i­lege to live and work in a won­der­ful place, and we take great care to inte­grate the com­pany and all its struc­tures into the sur­round­ing envi­ron­ment,” Zinelli added. ​“Our activ­ity must nec­es­sar­ily include a com­mit­ment to safe­guard­ing a land­scape that can truly be called iconic. Our olive groves also play a major role in this, and I believe that we farm­ers have both the merit and the respon­si­bil­ity to care for and safe­guard this extra­or­di­nary land­scape.”