A Focus on Design and Sustainability in Pursuit of Perfect Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Summary

The Cinaglia fam­i­ly’s ded­i­ca­tion to the land and empha­sis on beauty, design, and tech­nol­ogy has led to the suc­cess of their com­pany, Centumbrie, located in the hills sur­round­ing Trasimeno Lake in Umbria, Italy. Along with pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity olive oil and other agri­cul­tural prod­ucts, the fam­ily focuses on pre­serv­ing the nat­ural envi­ron­ment, uti­liz­ing sus­tain­able prac­tices, and offer­ing unique expe­ri­ences to vis­i­tors.

Dedication to the land com­bined with an empha­sis on beauty, design, tech­nol­ogy and envi­ron­ment serves as the creed of the Cinaglia fam­ily.

The fam­ily is one half of the force behind Centumbrie. This young but expe­ri­enced com­pany is flour­ish­ing in the ver­dant hills sur­round­ing Trasimeno Lake, a breath­tak­ing loca­tion in the cen­tral Italian region of Umbria.

Along with grow­ing 30 hectares of olive groves on their 140-hectare estate, the Cinaglia fam­ily has a diverse and organic agri­cul­tural port­fo­lio, main­tain­ing the native for­est and green­houses while grow­ing wheat, legumes and other types of fruit and rais­ing poul­try and cat­tle.

Along with their focus on high-qual­ity agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion, the fam­ily has restored its ancient farm­houses to serve as guest accom­mo­da­tions, focus­ing on ambi­tious archi­tec­ture that blends inno­va­tion and hos­pi­tal­ity.

These efforts, the fam­ily empha­sized, focus on beauty and design, offer­ing tourists some of the region’s most enchant­ing views together with a farm-to-table food culi­nary expe­ri­ence. However, owner Miriam Cinaglia told Olive Oil Times that it did not hap­pen overnight.

“We started by restor­ing the farm­houses and ancient build­ings sur­rounded by those beau­ti­ful olive groves,” she said. ​“Over time, we teamed up with local young pro­fes­sion­als and trans­formed the olive groves into a high-qual­ity olive oil pro­duc­tion project. This is how the Centumbrie com­pany was born.”

One of the first steps of the project was to con­struct a new mill, which was an archi­tec­tural and design exper­i­ment con­ceived to allow the olive trans­for­ma­tion process to hap­pen in a loca­tion shared with a shop and a trendy restau­rant.

“The COVID-19 pan­demic forced us to sus­pend our bistro oper­a­tions,” Cinaglia said. ​“But vis­i­tors can still wit­ness the mis­sion of our com­pany, which is to offer a range of high-qual­ity prod­ucts from this beau­ti­ful ter­ri­tory to our cus­tomers.”

Another part of her family’s mis­sion is to empha­size the qual­ity and trace­abil­ity of every­thing they offer.

“With Centumbrie, you can count on a short sup­ply chain, local prod­ucts, extra vir­gin olive oil processed by the most advanced machin­ery and rec­og­nized pro­fes­sion­als,” she said. ​“It’s a way to let the world appre­ci­ate Umbria’s trea­sures.”

Olive oil pro­duc­tion is essen­tial to the far­m’s oper­a­tions and last year, Centumbrie’s monocul­ti­var Frantoio won a Gold Award at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

Along with Frantoio, the fam­ily also grows Moraiolo and Leccino olives, both of which con­tribute to the pro­duc­tion of their PDO Umbria Colli del Trasimeno.

The fam­ily also grows the rare Dolce Agogia cul­ti­var, which is endemic to the east­ern shores of Trasimeno Lake and holds a very spe­cial place in their hearts.

While sev­eral leg­ends sur­round its ancient past, Dolce Agogia might have been named because it used to be har­vested very late in the sea­son, Cinaglia said, so that olives with lower lev­els of polyphe­nols would taste sweeter.

“Dolce Agogia is the focus of one of our lat­est ini­tia­tives, which com­bine our ancient olive oil with the evoca­tive ances­tral pot­tery of our local part­ner, the Endiadi ceramic artists,” she added.

In a 35-sec­ond video, a bal­le­rina dances among the olive trees to pro­mote their lim­ited-edi­tion offer­ing: L’Approdo, a monocul­ti­var Gran Cru Dolce Agogia. The oil has already been rec­og­nized by the Slow Food Foundation as a high-qual­ity prod­uct unique to Umbria that is at risk of extinc­tion.

“The extra vir­gin olive oil is pack­aged in his­toric ceramic bot­tles and is avail­able in two col­ors – the color of the lake or the land,” Cinaglia said.

She added that every­one involved in the pro­duc­tion, from the bal­le­rina and video crew to the ceramic artists, are young, local pro­fes­sion­als.

While beauty and design have played a vital role in the devel­op­ment of Centumbrie, advanced man­age­ment of the entire pro­duc­tion chain is the foun­da­tion of the company’s extra vir­gin olive oil and its suc­cess.

“When we receive olives for the trans­for­ma­tion, we first dis­card all the olives that do not reach our min­i­mum qual­ity stan­dards,” Luca Mencaglia, Centumbrie’s mill man­ager and ole­ol­o­gist, told Olive Oil Times. ​“That goes both for the olives we grow and those har­vested by the farm­ers with whom we work.”

Once only the best olives have been selected, they go on to the company’s state-of-the-art mill, which boasts two sep­a­rate pro­duc­tion lines. These allow Mencaglia to tai­lor the trans­for­ma­tion process of each oil pre­cisely.

“They are inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tion lines that mostly work with spe­cific and per­son­al­ized machin­ery,” he said. ​“We can choose to use one or the other to obtain dif­fer­ent results, needed to ful­fill the require­ments for our extra vir­gin olive oils.”

After the oil has been pro­duced, it is stored at 16 ºC using best prac­tices to pre­vent oxi­da­tion. The oils are then bot­tled in dark brown glass bot­tles entirely wrapped in the company’s label to avoid oxi­da­tion by light to the best of their abil­i­ties.

Their PDO Umbria Colli del Trasimeno is even wrapped in a dou­ble black coat­ing to pre­serve its con­tents for as long as pos­si­ble.

Part of Centumbrie’s suc­cess so far has been its abil­ity to sus­tain­ably exploit and uti­lize the nat­ural beauty of the hilly land­scape sur­round­ing Trasimeno Lake. Therefore, pre­serv­ing this nat­ural beauty and pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment is an essen­tial aspect of their busi­ness plan.

Sergio Rutili, Centumbrie’s gen­eral direc­tor, told Olive Oil Times that the com­pany sources its energy from a 300-kilo­watt pho­to­voltaic plant, which low­ers its car­bon foot­print sig­nif­i­cantly.

“Our work is focused on the preser­va­tion of the envi­ron­ment,” Rutili said. ​“That is true in all our pro­duc­tion processes and we even took advan­tage of the harsh times of this pan­demic to accel­er­ate sev­eral inno­v­a­tive projects, such as the reuse of olive pro­cess­ing waste­waters.”