Cerasuola Olives
Sicily’s cherry olive: a green, fruity, robust oil, partner to the gentle Biancolilla.
The Cerasuola takes its name from cerasa, cherry — for the bright cherry-red blush its fruit takes on as it ripens. It is a key western Sicilian oil olive, giving a vivid green, fruity and decidedly bold extra virgin with a strong bitter-peppery finish and good keeping power. Where the Biancolilla is gentle, the Cerasuola brings the backbone to a Val di Mazara blend.
- Origin
- Western Sicily · Italy
- Type
- Oil olive (some table)
- Colour
- Cherry-red to black
- Flavour (oil)
- Green, fruity, bold
- Finish
- Bitter, peppery
- Polyphenols
- Good — keeps well
- Best for
- Robust finishing oil, blends
The bold half of the blend
Cerasuola oil is everything Biancolilla is not: green, intense, fruity and peppery, with a bitterness that signals a healthy polyphenol load and a long shelf life. Bottled alone it is a characterful, competition-grade oil ; blended with the soft Biancolilla and the fruity Nocellara, it gives the western Sicilian oils their structure.
That cherry-red colour appears at veraison, the moment of ripening — a vivid field marker that gave the olive its name. As with all bold Sicilian oils, the peppery sting of a fresh Cerasuola is a virtue, not a flaw.