Extra Virgin Olive OilPistoiaSerravalle Pistoiese
The name comes from a stream. La Forra di Macolo rises inside the estate, and gave the estate its name long before Monica and Gaetano arrived. They brought back to life a piece of land that has been on the Catasto Leopoldino since 1800, and they made oil on it.
Montalbano hills, Serravalle Pistoiese · Moraiolo, Leccino, Frantoio · milled within 24 hours of harvest
Good oil is not made with a recipe. It is made with a tight calendar and the discipline to keep to it.
Podere Macolo is a farm in Serravalle Pistoiese, on the Montalbano hills. It was founded in 2017 out of the restoration of an old farmstead and produces extra virgin olive oil from a blend of Moraiolo, Leccino and Frantoio. Since 2025 it has also had a shop in Pistoia, in Via Monfalcone.
Macolo is not a surname and it is not a marketing invention. It is the name of the watercourse that rises on the farm: the Forra di Macolo. The business took its name from the place, not the other way round.
It is a small detail that says something precise about how it was conceived: the land first, the label afterwards.
The land already appears mapped in the Catasto Leopoldino, the nineteenth-century land register of Tuscan property. Monica and Gaetano restored it with an idea they sum up themselves in a single line.
Put like that it could sound like a polite phrase. It becomes verifiable when you look at the method: hand harvesting, no synthetic products, and a processing time that almost no industrial supply chain can afford.
The olive begins to warm up and to ferment as soon as it is picked. From that moment the quality of the oil falls, and it falls fast. Podere Macolo states that it keeps the olives at low temperature and mills them cold within twenty-four hours of harvesting.
It is the choice that costs the most — it forces them to harvest a little at a time and to take the fruit straight to the olive mill — and it is the one that decides almost everything else. The oil is then decanted, filtered and kept in an oxygen-free environment, which is the second enemy after time.
Until recently Podere Macolo was a farm and nothing more. In April 2025 it opened a shop in Pistoia, at Via Monfalcone 23, where the oil stands alongside other agricultural products from the territory.
For a fifteen-hectare business it is an important step: it means no longer depending only on those who make it all the way up to the farm.
A blend is a choice about what to put in the mouth first and what to leave until last.
The small dark olive of the Tuscan Apennines. It is the one that carries the bitterness and the pungency — that is, the polyphenols, which are the part of the oil that does you good and the part that keeps it alive longest.
The counterweight. It gives a sweet, round oil with little aggressiveness, and it serves to soften a blend that with Moraiolo alone would stay severe.
The cultivar that gives the olive mill itself its name. It carries the aroma: grass, artichoke, green leaf. It is the part of the oil you notice with the nose before the tongue.
On the nose: freshly cut grass and fresh olives. In the mouth an aftertaste of artichoke and tomato leaf remains. Bitterness and pungency, in an extra virgin, are the signature of the polyphenols. When they are missing altogether it means the oil is old, or that the olives were too ripe.
Six steps, and five out of six are races against time.
Traditional cultivation with natural products only, on around fifteen hectares among the olive trees of the Montalbano.
No indiscriminate mechanical harvesting: the olives are picked off by hand and selected. It is slow, and it is the reason why they can then mill straight away.
From the field to the olive mill the olives stay at low temperature. Heat is what starts fermentation, and fermentation is what ruins the oil.
Cold pressing within a day of harvesting. It is the number that separates a quality extra virgin from an extra virgin and nothing more.
The oil rests and is filtered. Filtered oil lasts longer: the residues that settle at the bottom of an unfiltered oil are the ones that make it turn rancid over time.
Storage in an oxygen-free environment, bottling by hand and bottles sealed with sealing wax and the company's logo.
One oil, five sizes, and a series of things that grow up around the olive once the oil is already in the bottle.
The company's product, a blend of Moraiolo, Leccino and Frantoio. In a bottle sealed with sealing wax, filled by hand.
Condiments based on extra virgin olive oil.
What is made with the fruit instead of the juice.
The most curious part of the stall, and the one that is better explained in person.
Three awards in three years, and not one of the three was bought.
Twenty-second edition of the competition run by the Pistoia-Prato Chamber of Commerce. Podere Macolo's oil came second at provincial level.
«Evo Macolo di Podere Macolo — Serravalle Pistoiese» appears in the Slow Food Guida agli Extravergini (guide to extra virgin olive oils), 2025 edition.
«Il Macolo» is among the winners of the Japan Olive Oil Prize 2024. An award that looks at the bottle as well as at the contents.
Two names on the sign, and three crafts called in from outside when they are needed.
The founders. The website presents them like this, with their first names and no formal roles: they are the ones who restored the farm in 2017 and who keep it going.
The Pistoia artist who designed the logo and the image of Macolo, and whom the business also credits for the artistic project of the new premises.
Olive oil sommelier. The local press lists him among the professionals who work alongside the business.
Olive miller. He is the figure who governs the most delicate step: milling within twenty-four hours.
Twenty-second edition of the competition run by the Pistoia-Prato Chamber of Commerce.
It opens at Via Monfalcone 23, in the Vergine district: oil and agricultural products from the territory. In the same month the business takes part in Serravalle De Gusto.
«Evo Macolo» enters the Grandi Oli Slow of the 2025 edition.
«Il Macolo» among the winners of the JOOP Design Award. In the same two years the awards from the Pistoia-Prato Chamber of Commerce also arrive.
The farm business is set up on 30 October and starts trading on 1 November, on the restored farmstead among the Montalbano hills.
The land appears surveyed on the land map of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, long before it had this name on the sign.
The farm is up on the hills. The shop is in town. They are two different things and it is worth telling them apart.
Via I Maggio 30/A 51030 Serravalle Pistoiese (PT) Montalbano hills, near Vinacciano.
Via Monfalcone 23 51100 Pistoia Opened in April 2025, with the oil and other agricultural products from the territory.
From a stream. The Forra di Macolo rises inside the farm: the business took its name from the place.
Moraiolo, Leccino and Frantoio, three Tuscan cultivars. The Moraiolo brings bitterness and pungency, the Leccino softens, the Frantoio gives the aroma.
Because the picked olive starts fermenting straight away, and from there the quality of the oil falls. Milling within a day, cold, is the most expensive choice in the chain and the one that weighs most on the result.
The business describes it as slightly bitter and mildly pungent, with an aroma of freshly cut grass and fresh olives, and an aftertaste of artichoke and tomato leaf.
No, it is the opposite. They are the signature of the polyphenols, that is, of the part of the oil that is good for your health and that preserves it. An extra virgin with neither of the two sensations is usually old.
Five: 100, 200, 250, 500 and 750 millilitres. The bottles are filled by hand and sealed with sealing wax.
No. The oil is bought at the Pistoia shop in Via Monfalcone 23, or by writing to the business through its own website.
Since November 2017, although the farmstead is much older: it already appears in the nineteenth-century Catasto Leopoldino.
Sales stay with the business: the Pistoia shop, the website, direct contact.
This profile is part of the archive for Extra Virgin Olive Oil. All the producers in the network.