In 2017, Giuseppe Trapani inherited a small olive grove planted by his great-grandfather more than a century ago in Sicily.

“That same year we had a bumper harvest and were left with a lot of surplus olive oil. The olive oil we had produced until then was just for us and the family, but that year we had so much that we didn’t know what to do with it,” he says.

“we need your precious help to make this happen”

“So I asked around my neighbours, friends and colleagues, and to my surprise I received a lot of interest, way more than I was hoping for!” the local resident, who works at Oxford University, remembers,

“I thought: in order to make this more of a social enterprise, what would be nicer than involving other local farmers, people I have known all of my life, whose great-grandfathers knew mine?”

Thanks to a Kickstarter campaign, he bought their surplus olives and used them to make olive oil for 2018. “Those were the same type of olives, carefully tended by people I know and trust. It was great working with other farmers, and with the people all across the UK who made this campaign a reality,” Guiseppi says.

Designing a logo for a proper bottle and creating a website for their olive oil, Ogglio, which means oil in Sicilian, was born.

That’s why, Guiseppe has now launched another Kickstarter campaign to bring the harvest home once again. “We plan to produce our olive oil in a collaborative way, with the help of the same local farmers as last year: and of course once again we need your precious help to make this happen,” he says.

Those who contribute can be rewarded in olive oil, a great incentive if I ever heard one. And considering Ogglio has been shipped to happy foodies from Land’s End to John o’ Groats, as well as local restaurants such as The Handlebar Cafe in Oxford.

So what is so good about Ogglio? “It is pure extra virgin olive oil with nothing else is added to it. The Nocellara del Belice is arguably one of the World finest olive cultivars (i.e. variety); indigenous to the Belice Valley in Western Sicily. A beautiful lime green with a mild, buttery flavour they are ideal to make a medium-strength Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

“It has a PDO status: this is a ‘Protected Designation of Origin’ status designated by the EU for its “exceptional properties and quality derived from their place of origin as well as from the way of their production.”

“Our organic extra virgin olive oil comes from the Belice Valley in Sicily from olives grown, harvested, and cold-pressed (at less than 25°C) locally, on the same day of picking, within a five-mile radius from the grove.”

But, despite raising 90% of the funds already, reaching their target on Kickstarter is essential to getting this project off the ground, as under Kickstarter rules, achieving the funding goal is all-or-nothing. The time period is short: the campaign closes on Sunday November 3 at 11.59pm.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ogglio/2019-olive-oil-harvest