Moraiolo Olives
L’olive à huile robuste d’Ombrie et de Toscane — verte, amère, piquante, riche en polyphénols.
The Moraiolo is one of central Italy’s great oil olives, grown across Umbria, Tuscany and the Marche. It gives a robust, intensely green oil — grassy, markedly bitter and peppery, high in the polyphenols that make olive oil both healthy and stable. It is often blended with the gentler Frantoio and Leccino to build classic Umbrian and Tuscan oils with backbone.
- Origin
- Umbria / Tuscany / Marche · Italy
- Type
- Oil olive
- Colour
- Green to black
- Flavour (oil)
- Green, bitter, peppery
- Polyphenols
- High — very stable
- Role
- Backbone of central-Italian blends
- Best for
- Robust finishing oil
Backbone of the Umbrian bottle
Moraiolo is what gives a great Umbrian oil its punch: a strong green-fruity nose, a clean bitterness and a pepper sting that lingers. Like the Puglian Coratina, that intensity is the high polyphenol content showing itself — which is also why a good Moraiolo oil keeps so well. It is a small, hardy tree that copes with the hill country of central Italy.
Don’t mistake the bitterness and the throat-catch for a flaw — in a fresh Moraiolo oil they are signs of quality and of those healthy polyphenols. If you find it too fierce on its own, that is exactly why it is so often blended with rounder Frantoio and Leccino.