If you’ve been following along on Instagram, you’ll have seen my frequent work for the olive oil company Lucini Italia. It’s been one of the most rewarding partnerships of my professional career, one based on mutual respect, support, and a darn strong love of olive oil.

Meaning “little glimmering light”, Lucini is the impassioned project of a husband-and-wife team who visited Tuscany several years ago, fell in love with the food, and lamented the lack of high quality extra virgin olive oils here in the United States. So they set about building a brand that would reflect the purity and quality of their beloved Tuscan oils, featuring first-pressed oils harvested early in the growing season to capture the peak of freshness. Although Lucini’s Premium Select Extra Virgin Oil from Tuscany is still their flagship product, the company (now owned by California Olive Ranch) wanted to create another extra virgin olive oil that would reflect the same quality standards, but would be priced for everyday use.

Entre Cielos Resort & Spa

The South American high desert region of Mendoza, popular for it’s famous wine export, Malbec, might seem like an odd choice for an American-based, Italian-inspired olive oil company to set up shop. But as we – Lucini’s brand ambassadors – have learned over the past few months, the soil and temperature conditions in Mendoza are ideal for growing Mediterranean crops such as olives, wine, nuts and citrus. Furthermore, Italian farming expats have been moving to Argentina for generations, and with them, have brought the skills and techniques to develop a bright green and peppery Argentinian extra virgin olive oil that rivals the finest Tuscan product.

After developing recipes for Lucini over the past few months, the company was eager to fly several of us lucky bums down to Argentina to see the olive oil-making process in person. We would visit two of their producers – the Perez family farm – which still uses an Old World hand-harvesting technique that produces a higher yield, but is a more labor-intensive (and costly!) process. And a second producer – Olivaterra – based in San Juan in the foothills of the Andes Mountains, which processes olives at the other end of the spectrum: large-scale and machinery-intensive, relying on the latest and greatest in olive oil processing capabilities (hello drones!)

The Perez Family Farm

Both experiences were fun and educational, with sights and sounds that were worlds apart, yet accomplished the same goal: a high-quality Tuscan-style extra virgin olive oil, as useful for cooking as it is for finishing.

But our Lucini hosts wanted us to experience much more than olive oil. Argentina is rich in culture and we were encouraged to soak it all in – the sun, the food, the people. After all, tourists don’t visit Tuscany simply to experience its lush olive oil tradition. Our Argentine itinerary was packed with visits to various wineries, restaurants (Francis Mallman’s 1884 Restaurant was a dream for those like to cook with fire), and the loveliest B&B tucked into the mountains. There, we rode horses, feasted on charcuterie, and I tackled two full plates of meltingly tender lamb shanks for dessert. Followed of course by our real dessert – flan – drizzled, as to be expected, with Dulce de leche.

El Enemigo Winery

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