It’s been a hot few weeks here in Paciano. Italy is working through one of its most serious heat waves in years, and Umbria has been in the thick of it. Perugia, our province capital, has spent stretches of this summer under the health ministry’s highest red heat alert, with temperatures climbing past 40°C in places and humidity pushing the perceived temperature higher still. Nights have stayed warm too, which is the part that’s genuinely unusual.

If you want the clearest picture of the summer, look at Lake Trasimeno, a few minutes down the hill from us. Levels have dropped sharply, and the region has been pumping water in from the Montedoglio dam to hold the line. It’s a dry year, and we’re not going to pretend otherwise.

We know a lot of you are watching the calendar toward your October reservation, so here’s where things actually stand in the grove.

A hot, dry July

Olive trees are built for this. They’re deep-rooted and genuinely drought-tolerant, and they’ve been growing on these Umbrian hillsides through hot, dry summers for generations. This isn’t the first hard July these trees have seen, and it won’t be the last. A dry year is also not automatically a bad year for oil: stressed trees often produce smaller fruit with a lower yield, but that fruit can carry more concentrated polyphenols, which is where the pepper and bitterness in a good early-harvest oil come from. If you like seeing the numbers behind that, we publish the lab-certified chemical profile for every harvest.

What a dry year does affect is volume. We’ll have a much better read on that as the fruit sizes up through August and September.

Where the olives are right now

Growers track olive development on something called the BBCH scale, which breaks the season into numbered stages from bud break through harvest. Judging by the fruit above, we’re sitting around stage 75 to 77: the drupes are roughly 12 to 15 millimetres long and about 8 millimetres across, which is somewhere between half and two thirds of their final size. Held against a fingertip, that’s about the scale of it.

They’re still oblong rather than filled out, still hard, and still that flat deep green with pale speckling. The next milestone is pit hardening, when the endocarp (the stone) lignifies and the fruit stops putting energy into growing the pit and starts putting it into the flesh, which is where the oil accumulates. In central Italy that usually happens between mid-July and early August, so we are right at that threshold now rather than safely past it.

You’ll spot a couple of dark, shrivelled fruit above, sitting right alongside healthy green ones, plus a dried flower remnant still clinging to the stem. That’s normal. Olive trees set far more fruit than they can carry and shed the surplus through early summer, and a dry year nudges a few more off the branch. What matters is what’s left, and what’s left looks well spaced and well fed.

After pit hardening comes véraison, when the fruit turns from green toward straw, then purple, then black. Here that usually starts in September. We pick before it finishes, while the fruit is still mostly green, because early-harvest fruit gives lower yield per kilo but far more polyphenols. That’s the grassy, peppery, catch-in-the-back-of-the-throat character in the bottle. It also keeps us on track for our October press.

Grove health check

Walking the rows this week, the trees look strong: full silvery-green canopies and steady growth at the branch tips. Fruit set was good, with plenty of branches carrying pairs and triplets at a single node, enough that the wood is visibly arching under the weight.

There’s some yellowing on older interior leaves. That’s the ordinary two to three year leaf shed olives go through every summer, a little more noticeable in a dry season. We’re not seeing scorch on the new growth or dieback at the tips, which are the things that would actually worry us.

You’ll also notice a bottle trap hanging in one of the older trees. That’s for the olive fruit fly, Bactrocera oleae, and its timing is not a coincidence. The fly can’t lay successfully in a drupe until the fruit is big enough and the stone has started to develop, roughly seven to eight millimetres. Our fruit crossed that line recently, which is precisely when trapping stops being theoretical and starts being the job. So the traps go up now, we count what lands in them, and that tells us whether we need to do anything more before harvest. The people doing that counting are the same ones who have farmed this hillside for years, and you can meet our grower here.

What happens between now and your table

Our timeline hasn’t changed. Here’s the rest of the season, start to finish:

• October 14 to 15: we hand-pick here in Paciano and cold extract the same day at Frantoio Olivestri. Same-day pressing is the whole point. Every hour between picking and pressing costs you freshness.
• October 15 to November 1: lab testing for polyphenols, acidity, and peroxide values. While results come back, the oil rests under nitrogen so it can’t oxidise. Then it’s bottled, labeled, and cleared for export.
• Around November 1: it flies to the US. Airfreight, not sea. Days in transit, not weeks.
• November 26: delivery window starts, December week. You’ll get tracking by email as soon as your bottle is moving.

The full breakdown lives on our 2026 presale calendar.

The honest caveat is yield. A dry summer can mean a smaller crop, and we won’t know the real number until the fruit finishes sizing. We only produce what’s ordered, so once the release is spoken for there’s no more until next harvest. If anything changes that affects your reservation, you’ll hear it from us directly and early, not as a surprise in October.

One date to know: August 1

The 2026 presale is open right now, to everyone, at the best price of the season: 20% off, with an extra 5% on orders of six or more bottles.

On August 1 that steps down to 15% off. On November 1 it steps again to 10%. By December, when the bottles ship, it’s full price. The oil in the bottle doesn’t change at any point along that line. Only what you pay for it does, and from here it only moves one way.

The olives in these photos become our Olio Nuovo Paciano Vintage 2026. If you’d rather have the Colli del Trasimeno, that’s in the shop too. Either way, the next two weeks are the cheapest this harvest will ever be.

Earn points while you’re at it

The SOLO Grove Club is our loyalty program, and it’s free to join. Every dollar you spend earns Olive Points, and points move you up through four tiers: Olivo, Frantoio, Custode, and Ambassador. The higher the tier, the faster you earn, and the better the perks get.

You don’t have to buy anything to start. Creating an account earns 300 points on the spot. Signing up for the newsletter earns 500. Following us on Instagram or Facebook earns 150 each, leaving a review earns 300, and referring a friend earns you 500 while giving them 10% off their first order. Points redeem for vouchers and rewards whenever you want them.

Higher up, the perks stop being about discounts. Custode members get sample bottles to share, behind-the-scenes reports from Umbria, and an allocation reserved in their name. Ambassadors get the first bottles of every release, a complimentary full bottle each year, and calls with us directly.

If you’re already ordering this harvest, join the Grove Club first so the points land on your order instead of going nowhere.