The 1,000-Year
Olive Tree
A living record of everyone growing the grove for the next thousand years. Scroll to walk its history.
From the slopes of
Castroreale.
On the eastern flank of Mount Peloritani, in the ancient Sicilian commune of Castroreale, olive trees have grown for longer than recorded memory. Some of the oldest specimens here are over eight hundred years old — their gnarled trunks wider than a man's reach, their roots threaded through the same ancient rock that shaped this coastline.
The Castruriali grove was once part of a vast estate, tended by generations of the same families. The trees were near-abandoned by the twentieth century. What remained was not decline, but dormancy.
Continuity is the
only inheritance.
An olive tree does not measure time in seasons. The oldest trees in Sicily have outlasted empires, plagues and entire civilisations. They do not grow quickly — a tree that takes a century to mature will then produce fruit for another nine hundred years.
This is the logic Castruriali is built on. Not a harvest, but a continuum. The work we are doing now — clearing, pruning, adopting and planting — is work that will bear fruit long after us. The trunk of the tree is not ours. We are custodians of it.
The oil today.
The grove tomorrow.
Today's Castruriali oil, the 2024/2025 Early harvest, is grown by the Monte family in the hills of Salemi and made at the Mandanici mill in Castroreale: Nocellara del Belice, Cerasuola and Biancolilla, picked at the turn of colour and cold extracted below 27°C. A single-origin oil, never mixed with oils from other regions or harvests.
Here in Castroreale the restoration goes on: clearing, pruning and propagating trees that had not been touched in a generation and the rare Castriciana Rapparina, whose single-cultivar oil is planned for 2027/2028.
Adopt a tree.
Claim your place.
Every adoption is a branch added to the tree. When you adopt an olive tree at Castruriali, you receive Castruriali extra virgin olive oil from the harvest, delivered to your door. You also receive a certificate of adoption and a permanent place in this grove.
Three tiers: Sapling, Heritage and Guardian. Each comes with its own oil, its own certificate and its own place on the Wall of the Grove.
Names on
the wall.
These are the people growing this grove. Every adopter is named permanently below — carved into the record long after the oil has been pressed and the bottles opened.
Scroll to the wall ↓
Every bottle purchased, every tree adopted, every recipe shared — each one adds your thread to this story. The grove grows with every friend it gains.
Those who tend the grove.
A permanent record of every person who has adopted a tree at Castruriali. Their names remain here for as long as the grove stands.