In Italy, olive oil was never something the Frattali family bought. It was something they made. You tended the trees through the year, you picked when the fruit was ready, and you took it to be pressed while it was still fresh. What came back filled the kitchen for the next twelve months. Nobody called it single estate. It was just oil, from your own trees.
When the family settled in Australia they brought the habit with them. Umberto found land in the Murrindindi hills near Yea, about two hours north east of Melbourne, and planted a grove. The country there is steep and green, cold in winter, with long dry summers. It turned out to suit olives well.
Why they press on the farm
Most Australian growers truck their fruit to a shared press. That is normal and there is nothing wrong with it, but it costs time, and time is the enemy of olive oil. Olives begin to ferment and oxidise as soon as they come off the tree. A day in a bin in the sun does measurable damage before the fruit is even crushed.
So the family put a press on their own property. Fruit picked in the morning is usually crushed by the afternoon, and always within 24 hours. That single decision is the reason the oil tastes the way it does. It is also why they can say exactly which rows of trees a given batch came from.
What single estate actually means here
Single estate means the oil in the bottle came from one property, in one season, and was not blended with anything else. No oil bought in to stretch the volume, no mixing across harvests to even out the flavour, no imported base. It is a smaller and less forgiving way to work, because a difficult season shows up in the bottle instead of being averaged away.
It also means the oil changes a little from year to year, the way anything grown outdoors does. Most people find that is the point. There is more on this in why single estate is worth paying for, and the full process is set out in how it is made.
Where I come into it
I married into this family. For years the oil moved the way it always had, by word of mouth and by car boot, which works beautifully until somebody in Melbourne asks where they can get some and the honest answer is a two hour drive.
So that became my job. I am The Olive Guy. I hold stock in Glen Iris, I take the orders, and I deliver around the inner east myself. The farm keeps doing what it is good at, and nobody has to drive to Yea for a bottle of oil.
The grove has its own site if you want to read about the property and the family directly, or if you are a local grower wanting your own fruit pressed. That is all at Murrindindi Olive Grove.
What we are not
We are not a large producer. There is one grove, one press and one harvest a year, so when a season sells out it is genuinely gone until the next one. We do not blend to keep supply up and we do not buy oil from anyone else to put our name on.
If you want to try it, the shop page has the three sizes and takes about a minute. If you would rather ask a question first, I am on 0417 188 345.