On Etna’s Volcanic Slopes, Sikulus Revives a Family Olive Oil Legacy

Summary

Sergio Pappalardo, a fifth-gen­er­a­tion olive oil pro­ducer, estab­lished Sikulus in 2018 on the slopes of Mount Etna, where Nocellara Etnea trees thrive in vol­canic soil. Pappalardo’s pas­sion for his Sicilian roots and olive oil pro­duc­tion led him to cre­ate unique prod­ucts, like Pronio’s Monte Etna PDO, and to com­mis­sion a sym­phonic piece, Sikulus, inspired by his fam­i­ly’s her­itage and the land they cul­ti­vate.

On the south­west­ern slope of Mount Etna, Europe’s high­est active vol­cano, the Sikulus olive groves are rooted in land once known as a ​“sciara,” the Sicilian term for ter­rain marked by a lava flow. The word draws from Arabic and Latin ori­gins asso­ci­ated with uncul­ti­vated and burned land, reflect­ing the harsh beauty of this cor­ner of Sicily.

The orchard stretches from 400 to 950 meters above sea level, where cen­turies-old Nocellara Etnea trees thrive in fer­tile ground enriched by the slow weath­er­ing of vol­canic debris. The groves are part of a land­scape shaped by fire, alti­tude and time.

“I rep­re­sent the fifth gen­er­a­tion of my fam­ily com­pany, whose first olive oil pro­duc­tion dates back to 1875, accord­ing to my grand­fa­ther Giuseppe, who pre­serves our his­tor­i­cal mem­ory,” Sergio Pappalardo told Olive Oil Times. ​“We still have the old press with its mill­stones that remained in use until after World War II.”

Don Peppino, as his grand­fa­ther is affec­tion­ately known, is the name Pappalardo chose for the first extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duced by Sikulus, which was estab­lished in 2018. From Santa Maria di Licodia, near Catania, the com­pany now sends most of its pro­duc­tion to inter­na­tional mar­kets, includ­ing the United States, Singapore, Japan, Australia and Sweden.

“I called my project Sikulus to evoke the spirit of Sicily, dri­ven by the desire to bring my island and my home­land, Etna, to the world,” Pappalardo said. ​“When it came to pack­ag­ing, I opted for square bot­tles in bright col­ors, dis­tinct from more clas­sic ves­sels. Paying atten­tion to these details was an instinc­tive choice, shaped by my back­ground.”

Until shortly before launch­ing the ven­ture, Pappalardo was on a very dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sional path. After earn­ing a degree in eco­nom­ics and com­plet­ing a master’s in busi­ness man­age­ment and mar­ket­ing, he built a strong career in Rome.

“I was fully immersed in that work when I began to feel the call of the land,” he said. ​“Something sparked within me, fueled by my strong bond with Sicily, and I said to myself, ​‘I need to return and build some­thing on my own land.’ This is how Sikulus was born. I decided to take the reins of the fam­ily busi­ness, relaunch it and open it to the world.”

Pappalardo said many peo­ple ques­tioned the deci­sion. Even his par­ents were puz­zled after years of study in another field and a suc­cess­ful job in the cap­i­tal.

Back in Sicily, he began for­mal train­ing in the olive oil sec­tor and took over man­age­ment of the fam­ily com­pany. During that period, he also became an olive oil som­me­lier and now teaches advanced man­age­ment courses for the indus­try.

“My first move was to start har­vest ear­lier than usual. By tra­di­tion, grow­ers in this area began har­vest­ing on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8,” Pappalardo said. ​“I remem­ber some elderly peo­ple say­ing to my father, ​‘Your son is crazy,’ because the idea of har­vest­ing olives in October, when they were still com­pletely green at an alti­tude where they ripen even later, was unthink­able.”

Over time, he said, that deci­sion proved essen­tial to achiev­ing qual­ity, and some neigh­bor­ing grow­ers even­tu­ally fol­lowed suit.

The cen­turies-old grove, which has earned Slow Food Presidium recog­ni­tion, stands on land reshaped by vol­canic erup­tions and reclaimed in ancient times. Terraces sup­ported by dry-stone walls alter­nate with embank­ments and slop­ing sec­tions. Because of the rugged land­scape, the 14-hectare prop­erty includes only about nine hectares of cul­tivable land.

“One hectare of these plots con­tains fewer trees than would fit in a reg­u­lar-pat­tern orchard,” Pappalardo said. ​“It is demand­ing work, and we can truly call it heroic olive farm­ing.”

He explained that the plots are inac­ces­si­ble to mechan­i­cal equip­ment. Even elec­tric har­vesters are imprac­ti­cal because they scat­ter fruit in all direc­tions, mak­ing col­lec­tion too dif­fi­cult on the steep and irreg­u­lar ter­rain. As a result, har­vest­ing is done entirely by hand with man­ual rakes.

When the olives reach the opti­mal stage of ripeness, a team of about two dozen work­ers har­vests the fruit and ensures it is deliv­ered to the mill within hours.

In recent years, to pre­vent the olives from over­heat­ing dur­ing peri­ods of extreme heat, the com­pany intro­duced refrig­er­ated trucks for trans­port, an adap­ta­tion to increas­ingly dif­fi­cult har­vest con­di­tions.

As a milling tech­ni­cian, Pappalardo per­son­ally over­sees pro­cess­ing at a nearby facil­ity equipped with a lat­est-gen­er­a­tion Pieralisi sys­tem.

“Pronio’s Monte Etna PDO, which won a Gold Award at the NYIOOC, is named after the Pronio fam­ily, our importers in the U.S.,” he said. ​“We crafted this oil to strengthen the con­nec­tion between Sikulus and the U.S. mar­ket. With notes of grass, arti­choke and tomato leaf, along with hints of green apple and pep­per, it embod­ies the essence of our flag­ship vari­ety, Nocellara Etnea.”

Pappalardo said Etna’s ongo­ing erup­tive activ­ity can make work in the groves espe­cially dra­matic. At times, he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors return home after a day in the orchard with their clothes black­ened by vol­canic ash.

“The active vol­cano makes this a unique land that feels truly vibrant,” he said. ​“One pos­i­tive aspect is the fer­til­ity of the soil, but the work is demand­ing, and only great pas­sion and love for what I do drive me to con­tinue year after year. Despite many chal­lenges and stress­ful moments, the sat­is­fac­tion this work brings in return is immense.”

He said olive oil has also become a way to con­nect with peo­ple across cul­tures and back­grounds. ​“These human con­nec­tions are invalu­able,” Pappalardo said. ​“As a small pro­ducer, I end up form­ing spe­cial rela­tion­ships with my cus­tomers, won­der­ful syn­er­gies that often evolve into friend­ships.”

Pappalardo said he hopes one day his son Lorenzo and daugh­ter Lara will embrace the family’s olive oil tra­di­tion with the same pas­sion. Above all, he wants them to safe­guard the her­itage rep­re­sented by the fam­ily land and its ancient trees. For now, at 5 and 7, they already enjoy the oil and know how to ​“strip­pare,” or slurp, when tast­ing it.

Music also plays an impor­tant role in fam­ily life. Their mother, Loriana Mazzarino, is a clas­si­cal flutist, and that world inspired one of the company’s lat­est projects.

“Living in a musi­cal envi­ron­ment, with my wife and our many friends in the sec­tor, it felt nat­ural for me to view music, with its sen­sory dimen­sion, as a lan­guage capa­ble of express­ing the expe­ri­ence of olive oil and expand­ing the mean­ing of my jour­ney,” Pappalardo said.

To turn that idea into music, he com­mis­sioned the con­tem­po­rary sym­phonic piece Sikulus. Composed by Maestro Yuri Furnari, the work pre­miered last September at the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania, per­formed by the res­i­dent orches­tra under Maestro Francesco di Mauro, and is now avail­able to stream and down­load.

“This musi­cal com­po­si­tion tells the story of my ter­ri­tory and my oil, with the power of Etna, the energy of the sun, the beauty of the sea and the courage of those who remain and make the best of their land,” Pappalardo said. ​“It is ded­i­cated to all the farm­ers who carry this work for­ward with pas­sion and tenac­ity, and to every­one who val­ues our extra vir­gin olive oil and moti­vates us to pur­sue our mis­sion of qual­ity.”