The Castruriali journal.Il giornale Castruriali.

Castruriali was founded on 4 November 2023, when director Yazdaan Hussain travelled to Castroreale in the province of Messina to begin what would become a single-estate Sicilian olive oil house.

The trip took in Castroreale itself, the coastal town of Milazzo and, finally, Catania — and brought together the partners who would shape the venture: Marco Rappazzo, whose deep ties to the region opened doors that outsiders rarely find, his brother Luca and Antonio and Giuseppe Mandanici, whose family has pressed olive oil in these hills for generations.

Together they purchased a warehouse and the surrounding land in Castroreale to serve as the project's production headquarters — and set about restoring a landscape of more than a million olive trees, many left untended for years.

At the heart of it all was a single goal: to bring back the Nustrali olive, an indigenous Sicilian variety so rare it had nearly vanished from cultivation, and to press it into a cold-extracted extra virgin oil worthy of its history.

"Great things often begin in the smallest of places," Hussain reflects, "with a vision, a commitment and the courage to take the first step." Castruriali Ltd was registered in England and Wales shortly after and the work in the groves has continued ever since.

From 21 to 24 November 2024, Castruriali took its place at the BBC Good Food Winter Show at the NEC in Birmingham — our first appearance at a major public event and the first time most visitors had ever tasted our oil.

Thursday opened quietly, but the hall filled through Friday and into the weekend, with the busiest hours falling between 10am and 3pm. Glass after glass, the same words came back to us — nutty, buttery, peppery, fruity, grassy — a fair description of a single-estate oil pressed from native Sicilian cultivars.

We adjusted our pricing across the show to put a genuinely premium Sicilian oil within easier reach of a wider public — and the response told us it was the right call.

"It's about building a community that values tradition, authenticity and sustainability," says Yazdaan Hussain, Castruriali's director, reflecting on the weekend. He is candid about the scale of the task behind it: well over a million olive trees across Castroreale, Sicily, in need of care and revival.

The show gave us something hard to manufacture any other way — direct feedback, face to face, from people meeting Castruriali for the first time. It is feedback we are already carrying into where we show up next.

On 3 and 4 January 2025, Castruriali took up a small pop-up spot on the King's Road in Chelsea, SW3 — pairing our oil with ancient grain sourdough for two quiet, wintery days on one of London's best-loved streets.

It was a small event by design and all the better for it. No stage, no schedule — just bread, oil and conversation, and a steady stream of curious, generous people stopping to taste. We met a lot of lovely faces that weekend, several of whom are still with us today.

On 15 March 2025, Castruriali made its debut at St Albans Market — a market with roots stretching back to a charter granted in 1553, when Edward VI sold the right to hold it to a group of local merchants and landowners, incorporating St Albans as a borough in the process. Markets are recorded on the site even earlier, founded under Abbot Ulsinus, making it one of the longest-running markets in England.

It felt like the right place to put down roots. The original market hall dated from around 1596, later replaced by the Corn Exchange in 1857 — a town that has been trading in the same spot, in one form or another, for the better part of five centuries.

Since that first Saturday, Castruriali has become a regular fixture in Market Place, St Albans — pouring tastings, meeting customers face to face and building the kind of word-of-mouth that no amount of advertising can buy. You can find us there most Saturdays; see our Events page for upcoming dates.

From 3 to 7 May 2025, we ran the first pilot of the Castruriali Experience — five days in and around Castroreale, testing what it would mean to bring guests properly into our world rather than simply sending them a bottle.

Chef Enzo Oliveri joined us for the week, cooking an excellent selection of fresh Sicilian dishes built around Castruriali EVOO — proof, if any were needed, of how far a good oil can carry a simple plate when it is used with real skill.

We toured the mill and sat down for a proper tasting, walking through the presses and the process behind every bottle. Then, for something entirely different, we spent a morning making ancient grain pasta by hand with Giuseppe Coppolino.

Giuseppe runs a historic watermill in the medieval village of Castroreale, renowned for preserving and grinding traditional Sicilian ancient grains. His family has worked the mill since 1860, still turning original stone gears to grind heirloom wheats — Tumminia, Russello and Perciasacchi — into fragrant, stone-ground flour, much as they would have a century and a half ago.

It was a genuinely lovely few days and the template for what is now a proper offering. Read more on our Experience page, where stays, tastings and tours like this one are now open to guests.

Our debut single-estate oil has been awarded a one-star Great Taste 2025 accolade by the Guild of Fine Food, judged in a blind tasting by a panel of chefs, buyers and food writers.

For a first harvest, it is recognition we are quietly proud of — and a mark of the volcanic Sicilian terroir, the early hand-harvest and the patient resting that shapes every bottle.

On 9 and 10 September 2025, Castruriali exhibited at the Speciality & Fine Food Fair at Olympia, London — our first B2B event and a first chance to put our oil directly in front of buyers, retailers and the wider trade.

Where Birmingham introduced us to the public, Olympia was about relationships — conversations with delis, restaurants and distributors who taste a great deal of olive oil and whose standards are not easily won over. The trade interest we found there is already shaping where Castruriali turns up next.

The 2025 olives came in green and early, when polyphenols are at their peak. Picked by hand and pressed the same day using the latest Pieralisi technology, below 27°C.

Fresh from the press the oil was intense and powerfully pungent — so it rested in our stainless tanks for several weeks to soften and round into balance before bottling.

From 27 to 30 November 2025, Castruriali returned to the BBC Good Food Winter Show at the NEC, Birmingham — our second time at the show and a markedly different welcome from our first.

The highlight of the weekend came on stage, where Gennaro Contaldo showcased our extra virgin olive oil to the crowd and spoke warmly in its favour — a moment of real validation from one of Italian cooking's most respected voices.

A year on from our debut at the same venue, it was a fitting way to mark how far Castruriali has come — and a reminder of why we keep showing up, glass in hand, wherever good food people gather.

Across Sicily millions of olive trees stand neglected. Grove by grove we are bringing them back into careful cultivation in the hills above Castroreale, creating work and reviving the land.

Among them are near-extinct native cultivars such as the Castricianella (Castriciana Rapparina), which we propagate and protect so they are not lost to the next generation.