corto growers
Soil to Oil
From nurturing California's fertile soil to cultivating thriving olive groves, the farming families behind our fresh oil dedicate themselves to creating the freshest, highest-quality olive oil through care and innovation.
Login to the Grower’s PortalIt starts with the soil.
Every great decision begins with our farming families’ thoughtful allocation of land for high-density olive groves. California’s Mediterranean climate and fertile soil provide ideal conditions for this water-efficient crop. From planting to harvest, Corto’s team collaborates with farmers year-round to ensure healthy groves and bountiful yields. The finest olives, harvested at peak freshness in the Fall, create our ultra-fresh olive oil, crafted for discerning chefs.
Propagating & Planting
Before our newest olive grove can be developed, every tree must be cared for with the utmost attention in a climate-controlled nursery. The baby olive tree begins as a clipping from a healthy and mature “parent” olive tree. The clipping is then placed in a “plug” of rich soil where it will grow its own root system and a new set of leaves (shown). In the nursery, it is nurtured and irrigated with nutrient enriched water in a comfortable growth-promoting environment for ten months. Once the baby olive tree has established a sturdy set of roots to support its growing stem of leaves stretching 18-24 inches tall, it will be strong enough to move from the nursery to our new grove in California’s fertile Central Valley.
Seasonal Care
From winter soil preparation to the Fall harvest, our growers work year-round to nurture each grove, ensuring the highest-quality olives for our fresh olive oil.
The Fall Harvest
Each Fall, Corto celebrates the newest crop of olives! This is when we race to pick our fruit at the peak of freshness to create award-winning, ultra-fresh olive oil. The harvest starts in our vineyard-style groves with our specially designed, over-the-row harvester that gently picks olives off the branches with long rotating fingers. Very similar to how wine grapes are picked, this approach allows us to harvest when the olives are at their peak. Our Fall bounty is beautiful green olives with just a hint of violet color. In the heart of the Fall season, we work 24/7 to harvest these beautiful olives. We only have a short four to six-week window between October and November, when the olives perfectly meet our strict freshness standards. Once our fruit is gently harvested, we transport it to our state-of-the-art mill and cold-extract the oil within hours.
Harvest to Mill
With each new Harvest season, our Master Miller along with the entire team at our California mill are pursuing perfection, from the fruit to the oil! We eagerly welcome this stage of the journey when the olives become the fresh oil that will soon be an integral part of the culinary experiences created by amazing chefs. Corto’s entire milling philosophy is centered around freshness because olive oil is essentially fresh squeezed juice. Olives picked in the Fall at just the right time, green with a hint of violet, make fresher, higher quality oil.
