Passion for Quality Becomes Legacy at Oro di Giano Farm in the Heart of Umbria

Summary

Claudia Pompilj’s farm in Umbria is home to the ancient ​‘Olivo di Macciano,’ a thou­sand-year-old olive tree that is the cen­ter of her award-win­ning Oro di Giano brand. Pompilj’s jour­ney from a career in mar­ket­ing to becom­ing a pas­sion­ate olive oil pro­ducer is marked by patience, ded­i­ca­tion, and a com­mit­ment to sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, with plans to expand into immer­sive oleo­tourism expe­ri­ences.

One of Umbria’s old­est olive trees stands in Macciano, a ham­let of Giano dell’Umbria, in the heart of cen­tral Italy. With its more than one thou­sand years of age and an impres­sive trunk that seems to carry its entire story, the ​‘Olivo di Macciano’ is the cen­ter­piece of Claudia Pompilj’s farm at the foot of the Martani Mountains.

“This year marks exactly 10 years since I founded the com­pany, and look­ing back on this first decade, I am filled with grat­i­tude,” Pompilj told Olive Oil Times.

At its first par­tic­i­pa­tion in the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, her blend Oro di Giano Macciano DOP Umbria Colli Martani earned a Gold Award, thanks to an ele­gant pro­file with cap­ti­vat­ing herbal notes.

“This expe­ri­ence has taught me, first and fore­most, patience,” Pompilj pointed out. ​“Before, I was rest­less, always jug­gling a thou­sand things and impa­tient for imme­di­ate results. I remem­ber, early on, my col­lab­o­ra­tors at the farm warned me, ​‘Look Claudia, here it takes months to reap the fruits of what you sow – there are no short­cuts!’ I arrived think­ing I would just pick the olives and go right back to my life. It did not take long to real­ized that har­vest­ing takes a full year of ded­i­ca­tion. I have car­ried that insight into my per­sonal life.”

The Oro di Giano farm spans 160 hectares (395 acres), of which fif­teen hectares are devoted to olive groves with 4,000 trees, includ­ing Moraiolo, Frantoio, and Leccino, as well as San Felice and Tendellone, native to the area. On the prop­erty, which has been in Pompilj’s fam­ily for gen­er­a­tions, stands a farm­house built by her ances­tors in the early 1400s.

“My father Martino was a lawyer who also man­aged this farm. In 2011, after his pass­ing, I found myself tak­ing over its reins,” Pompilj recalled. ​“Until then, fully immersed in my pre­vi­ous work, I knew noth­ing about the agri­cul­tural world.”

Born and raised in Rome, she earned a bachelor’s degree in busi­ness and eco­nom­ics. She spent 18 years work­ing in mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing, fol­lowed by another ten in tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion — a past far removed from her life today.

“Two years later, my hus­band and I sep­a­rated. The years lead­ing up to the found­ing of my own com­pany were extremely chal­leng­ing, yet ulti­mately proved piv­otal,” Pompilj said. ​“With my son Simone still lit­tle, I was sud­denly in charge of han­dling numer­ous respon­si­bil­i­ties.”

Encouraged by her col­lab­o­ra­tor, Alessandro Flamini, she decided to launch her own brand of extra vir­gin olive oil. It was not only a busi­ness move but also a defin­ing moment in her life jour­ney.

“At first, it was an instinc­tive, almost impro­vised leap of faith. Then, one day in a restau­rant, I tasted an extra­or­di­nary Umbrian extra vir­gin olive oil. It was an enlight­en­ment. From that point on, I knew I would pur­sue the high­est stan­dards of qual­ity in my own work,” she empha­sized. ​“Soon, olive oil became more than a prod­uct; it became the soul of the project, and the spark that launched a new chap­ter in my life. I must say that Simone wit­nessed my grad­ual trans­for­ma­tion into a pas­sion­ate devo­tee of agri­cul­ture, guided by the unyield­ing pur­suit of olive oil excel­lence.”

Pompilj soon embarked on an inten­sive train­ing path, com­plet­ing courses to qual­ify as a taster, pruner, and olive mill tech­ni­cian, while also earn­ing advanced cer­ti­fi­ca­tions for man­ag­ing an effi­cient, high-stan­dard busi­ness.

“I began with the idea of sell­ing abroad, con­vinced of the pro­duc­t’s poten­tial on the inter­na­tional stage. But then I found such a wel­com­ing and famil­iar envi­ron­ment among the Italian retail­ers and other oper­a­tors in the sec­tor, I told myself that my path should begin there, before even­tu­ally tak­ing me across the ocean,” she revealed.

The brand name Oro di Giano, mean­ing Gold of Giano, evokes the idea that, in the past, the prod­ucts of the earth were val­ued and exchanged like cur­rency. It also draws inspi­ra­tion from Janus, one of the old­est Roman deities, from whom the name of the town Giano dell’Umbria likely derives. Revered as the god of door­ways (ianua in Latin) and of pas­sages (iani), he was por­trayed with two faces, look­ing both to the entrance and the exit, to the past and to the future.

“I found it mean­ing­ful that Janus is the deity pre­sid­ing the past and the future, the tran­si­tions and the begin­nings,” Pompilj under­lined. ​“So, I per­son­ally designed the com­pany logo, plac­ing my father’s pro­file on the left and mine on the right, to sym­bol­ize the pass­ing of the torch from him to me. I owe him for pass­ing this land down to me, a place of beauty and won­der, where I am blessed to host one of the region’s old­est olive tree.”

Listed in Italy’s national reg­is­ter of mon­u­men­tal trees, the Olivo di Macciano belongs to the Raja vari­ety and is dis­tin­guished by a broad trunk. It mea­sures just over 8 meters in girth, unfold­ing as if to offer an embrace.

“Many vis­i­tors say they feel some­thing pro­found radi­at­ing from it, like an energy shaped by the many cen­turies it has endured,” Pompilj revealed. ​“When I face chal­leng­ing moments, I go there, I wrap myself in its trunk’s embrace, I ask what to do, and some­how, the answer always comes.”

The mon­u­men­tal tree is the cen­ter­piece of an ancient 15-hectare orchard, com­posed of three plots arranged in a tra­di­tional plant­ing lay­out, with approx­i­mately 6 meters (20 feet) between trees. Recently, 5 hectares of San Felice were added, extend­ing the grove in the same pat­tern.

“As is often the case in tra­di­tional groves, the older plots con­tain a mix of olive vari­eties inter­spersed through­out. To obtain the San Felice mono­va­ri­etal, I usu­ally track down each tree of that vari­ety, select­ing them from among the oth­ers scat­tered across the field,” Pompilj explained. ​“Once the new grove, planted entirely with San Felice, begins pro­duc­ing in four to five years, har­vest­ing will be eas­ier.”

The company’s cur­rent pro­duc­tion includes one mono­va­ri­etal and two blends. In cer­tain sea­sons, Oro di Giano also cre­ates exclu­sive edi­tions crafted in lim­ited quan­ti­ties. The olives are entrusted to Frantoio Filippi, a state-of-the-art mill located near the farm.

A few years ago, Pompilj designed an irri­ga­tion sys­tem based on a well and cis­terns to col­lect water, with 10 kilo­me­ters of under­ground pip­ing con­nect­ing them to the orchards, and 9,000 lin­ear meters of above-ground irri­ga­tion.

“The instal­la­tion demanded great effort, but given the cur­rent cli­mate sit­u­a­tion, it was a very far­sighted mea­sure, as I can now pre­vent drought stress in the olive trees,” she con­sid­ered. ​“However, our goal is to make the most effi­cient use of avail­able resources. Today, it is piv­otal to man­age the agri­cul­tural land sus­tain­ably in order to tackle the effect of cli­mate change and limit our impact on the envi­ron­ment.”

Most of the farm’s energy comes from pho­to­voltaic pan­els, and the land is cul­ti­vated mainly fol­low­ing organic and regen­er­a­tive prac­tices.

“I prac­tice crop rota­tion across the entire prop­erty, with thirty hectares sown with alfalfa and a rich mix of meadow grasses for six con­sec­u­tive years to pro­mote bio­di­ver­sity and regen­er­ate the soil,” Pompilj pointed out.

At least 15 hectares of the estate are ded­i­cated to the cul­ti­va­tion of pearl bar­ley, pearl spelt, var­i­ous types of lentils and chick­peas, green beans, buck­wheat, and the ancient Roveja, which was recently intro­duced.

In a vir­tu­ous cir­cle of sus­tain­abil­ity, the olive groves are fer­til­ized exclu­sively with local cat­tle manure sourced from nearby farm­ers through a mutual exchange: the com­pany pro­vides them with byprod­ucts from legume and cereal pro­cess­ing, which are used to feed their cat­tle.

“For some years now, we have also hosted bee­hives for small-scale honey pro­duc­tion. Every year I add some­thing new, and many won­der­ful thing are still to come,” Pompilj high­lighted. ​“With this first phase con­cluded, dur­ing which all the struc­tural and orga­ni­za­tional foun­da­tions were laid, I have count­less ideas and projects in mind.”

The com­pany orga­nizes olive oil tast­ings and events upon request, which are met with enthu­si­as­tic par­tic­i­pa­tion from both Italian and inter­na­tional guests. Plans are cur­rently under­way to cre­ate hos­pi­tal­ity spaces, open­ing her prop­erty to more immer­sive oleo­tourism expe­ri­ences.

“Each event, tast­ing, and meet­ing with vis­i­tors becomes a mean­ing­ful moment, enriched by heart­felt human exchange,” Pompilj said. ​“I believe qual­ity is not an end in itself. I do not sim­ply present my prod­uct, I also share the vision behind them, one that embraces the beauty of this land and respects its envi­ron­ment and peo­ple through sus­tain­able, whole­some agri­cul­ture.”

“When I think about the care and immense effort I have poured into this work, along­side the chal­lenges of recent years, which have been espe­cially tough for us farm­ers, from extreme weather to count­less other hard­ships, I real­ize it is not always easy,” she added. ​“Yet, for every dif­fi­culty there is recog­ni­tion and affec­tion from those who appre­ci­ate my prod­ucts, and have stood by me through the years. Every time I receive an award, I am happy above all because I know I am mak­ing them happy. And that is what makes it all worth­while.”

As the legacy once flowed from father to daugh­ter, so now the pas­sion is being passed to her child. The Oro di Giano home­page greets vis­i­tors with an image of mother and son stand­ing back-to-back, mir­ror­ing the com­pany logo. It is paired with a verse by Nazim Hikmet: ​‘The most beau­ti­ful sea is that which hasn’t been crossed yet…’ A vision that hon­ors her­itage while look­ing toward the promise of the future.

“Simone has seen how deeply I have inter­twined my jour­ney with this project. He is young, yet he has already embraced the world of extra vir­gin olive oil with enthu­si­asm,” Pompilj revealed. ​“Still, I do not want him to feel pres­sured. At times I worry I may influ­ence him too much, because he sees the strong bond I have with this land and how ful­filled I feel by this work. He does love this place and is gen­uinely inter­ested in our activ­i­ties. If he chooses to fol­low in my foot­steps, I will be truly glad. But more than any­thing, I want him to be free and happy with what­ever path he chooses.”