Sustainability, Biodiversity Good for Business, This Campania Farmer Believes

Often referred to as the green heart of Campania for its nat­ural beauty, the his­tor­i­cal region of Irpinia – approx­i­mately cor­re­spond­ing to the province of Avellino – boasts a his­tory of fine wine and award-win­ning extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­tion.

“Our groves have given us so much, and the qual­ity of our pro­duc­tion allowed us to make our­selves known quickly also in the inter­na­tional mar­ket,” said Claudio De Luca, the owner of Case d’Alto.

Initially, De Luca appeared des­tined to pur­sue a career in finance. Still, through a twist of fate, he founded the win­ery and olive grove in the lime­stone-rich vol­canic clay soils around his home­town in the south­ern Italian region.

“I thought I would be work­ing with banks after grad­u­at­ing in the eco­nom­ics of finan­cial inter­me­di­aries at the University of Pisa in Tuscany,” De Luca said.

“One day, I went back to my home­town, where I had some­thing to take care of,” he added. ​“I thought it was tem­po­rary, but instead, I decided to stay and ded­i­cate myself to agri­cul­ture.”

In 2011, De Luca estab­lished Case d’Alto as an organic farm named after the area renowned for pro­duc­ing Taurasi, a red wine made from Aglianico grapes. Along with this grape vari­ety, De Luca started pro­duc­ing another autochtho­nous vine, Fiano, from ancient vine­yards.

“My fam­ily has always made wine and olive oil for home con­sump­tion,” he said. ​“At that time, I used to travel often, and I came to appre­ci­ate the idea of stay­ing and work­ing in my land of ori­gin.”

“My orig­i­nal project involved installing a large pho­to­voltaic sys­tem on a fal­low plot of sev­eral hectares beside the vine­yards,” De Luca added. ​“However, due to bureau­cratic issues, it blew up, and in 2012, I decided to plant 700 olive trees on that empty land.”

Intending to con­tinue the fam­ily tra­di­tion and focus on qual­ity, he expanded the olive grove and exper­i­ment until he car­ried out the first sig­nif­i­cant har­vest in 2016.

Today, the farm includes 1,000 trees, and another 700 will soon be planted. A cen­turies-old grove in Grottaminarda, which con­tains a mix of vari­eties, sits at the prop­er­ty’s core. It was used to ensure a con­stant yield from year to year, with the preva­lence of Frantoio and Ogliarola Irpina.

After con­duct­ing agro­nomic sur­veys in Flumeri, which is par­tic­u­larly suit­able for olive oil pro­duc­tion, De Luca set up a seven-hectare orchard mainly com­posed of autochtho­nous Ravece. He pro­duces a blend from Leccio del Corno, Leccino, Frantoio and other native vari­eties, includ­ing Marinese.

“Having started to col­lab­o­rate with an importer in the U.S., we began to par­tic­i­pate in the NYIOOC with our Ravece mono­va­ri­etal, which has racked up three awards, giv­ing us great sat­is­fac­tion,” De Luca said. ​“In the 2022/23 crop year, we had a sharp decline in wine pro­duc­tion, but it was com­pen­sated by a great olive har­vest, even beyond expec­ta­tions, cul­mi­nat­ing in a Gold Award.”

The main char­ac­ter­is­tic of Ravece is a note of green tomato leaves or tomato, depend­ing on the fruit’s ripeness. This may be accom­pa­nied by hints of herbs, arti­chokes and apples, with bright, per­sis­tent bit­ter­ness and spici­ness.

De Luca says Case d’Alto extra vir­gin olive oils are obtained from fruits pressed within six hours at Frantoio Barbieri, a state-of-the-art mill in Paternopoli, ten kilo­me­ters from the farm. Depending on the weather, the har­vest usu­ally starts by the end of September and ends in mid-October.

“Although Ravece is a late-ripen­ing vari­ety, we antic­i­pate the oper­a­tions for two main rea­sons,” De Luca said. ​“First, it is sus­cep­ti­ble to the olive fruit fly, and since the organic man­age­ment of the estate requires us to imple­ment a pre­ven­tion model to avert this pest, we can only col­lect the fruits before its arrival.”

“Second, the soil in Flumeri is mainly clayey, and when the rains start, this may cause prob­lems with vehi­cle use,” he added. ​“Therefore, we need to work with favor­able weather con­di­tions. Still, an early har­vest guar­an­tees prod­ucts with high polyphe­nol con­tent.”

The com­pany also relies on an Agriculture 4.0 sys­tem to pre­vent olive fruit fly infes­ta­tions. This sys­tem con­sists of mon­i­tor­ing units installed in the olive grove that cap­ture images and pro­vide weather infor­ma­tion.

“Such advance­ments lead to higher pro­duc­tion costs, to which extra efforts must be added, and there­fore, expenses are needed to work on these steep slopes,” De Luca said.

“However, all this is off­set by the high lev­els of qual­ity that we can guar­an­tee our con­sumers,” he added. ​“Smart tools also allow us to opti­mize resources and be more sus­tain­able.”

The groves are planted on well-exposed hills between 400 and 600 meters of alti­tude and require no irri­ga­tion, allow­ing the com­pany to use less water and achieve greater envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity.

“I believe that being sus­tain­able for a com­pany nowa­days is nec­es­sary not only to cope with cli­mate change,” De Luca said. ​“Preserving bio­di­ver­sity and main­tain­ing the land­scape are strictly related to the pro­duc­tion qual­ity. Good prod­ucts come from healthy envi­ron­ments.”

He added that pre­serv­ing nat­ural land­scapes also helps pro­mote oleo­tourism. ​“When peo­ple visit the farm, and I bring them to the orchards to admire these trees while tast­ing a slice of bread with the oil obtained from their fruits, they take home a stun­ning sen­so­r­ial expe­ri­ence,” De Luca said.

He believes there is a unique syn­ergy between wine and olive oil pro­duc­ers, who can use one prod­uct as a gate­way for con­sumers to try the other.

“I show them the dif­fer­ence between a poor oil and our pre­mium prod­ucts, and the reac­tions are always pos­i­tive, as they are amazed by their col­ors, fla­vors and aro­mas,” De Luca said.

“Consumers aware of olive oil qual­ity are still a niche group, and a lot of com­mu­ni­ca­tion needs to be done,” he con­cluded. ​“But those who try a great extra vir­gin olive oil do not return to a poorer one, and indeed, they start always to require the high­est qual­ity.”