In Italy’s olive-growing regions, the festivals begin in November or even earlier in places like Sicily. Everyone’s eager to taste the olio nuovo at its freshly pressed peak, when flavors are most intense.
That party is over. But here in the U.S., new oil from the 2024-2025 harvest is just making its way into markets. It’s a quiet entry because we don’t make a big deal of it. Recently bottled olive oil just starts to show up on shelves. Or sometimes it doesn’t soon enough–even in reputable Italian specialty stores, I’ve come across olive oil that’s two or three years old.
The new oil worth making a fuss about is what Italians call olio buono from a particular region, with good credentials. A bottle I bought from Gustiamo is certified organic, produced by Spedalotto and carries a DOP designation indicating its origin in the Tondo Iblei region. This oil was pressed a few months back but it’s still delicious, with an aroma redolent of green olives and herbs.
How do I know it’s from the most recent harvest? On the bottle neck is a sticker saying Olio Nuovo 24-25. The back label repeats the harvest years (end of 2024 into beginning of 2025) and gives a best-by date of 12/2026, two years out.
Here’s another oil, from Azienda Agricola Pianogrillo, that I bought for economy’s sake in a five-liter box about six months ago. The back sticker tells me it’s from the 2023/2024 harvest and the expiration date is August 31, 2025.
Labelling differs from one oil to the next, unfortunately, but you can often find the pertinent information there or by asking the proprietor. Try to buy from a source that knows what they’ll selling. Good olive oil is expensive, so it’s worth making sure you’re getting what you pay for.
If you still can’t tell when the oil was produced but it otherwise looks interesting, buy a small quantity to test out. I’ve never had an olive oil go rancid–perhaps because I use it steadily–but the fresh flavor notes decline.
Tasting the new oil is a simple matter. A Florentine gardener once showed me how to curl thumb around forefinger to make a snail shape, pour a small pool of oil in the crook and suck it off. Similarly, each olive oil entry in a structured tasting is sampled solo, from a glass.
In a Sicilian agriturismo where I once stayed, cubes of toasted semolina bread were routinely offered for breakfast, along with a bottle of oil, sea salt and black or red pepper in a grinder.
Bruschetta, another vehicle for new oil, is made by toasting bread slices and rubbing with garlic cloves, topping with whatever you want or nothing at all, and anointing with oil.
I’m especially enjoying my new oil on salads and on steamed or roasted vegetables.
Another lovely way to savor fresh olive oil is to barely simmer eggs in olive oil over low heat, spooning the oil over them until the whites are done but the yolks are still oozy. Served on toasted bread, or not.
Consider drizzling your freshly pressed oil over bowls of ribollita or another hearty soup. Don’t be stingy–most Italians aren’t.
One final suggestion: Tuscan-style bistecca, cooked rare, tastes even better with a drizzle of good olive oil.
I’m planning to order a bottle of Benza EVOO, a Ligurian oil whose producer says the most recent harvest resulted in superb quality. I expect it to have lighter, more delicate flavors than the Sicilian, Tuscan and Umbrian oils I usually favor. My family loves pasta with pesto, a specialty of Liguria, so I’m looking forward to making it with this oil.
Sometimes I make this herbed focaccia as one element in a meal. Alternatively, toppings such as tomatoes and black olives make it pretty enough to cut in small squares for aperitivo time.
On visits to Canu, a popular bakery in the Tuscan city of Montevarchi, I used to order pizza with colorful toppings, until a friend taught me the real game. Big squares of schiacciata, split and filled with mortadella carved off an enormous log. Easy to do, even when your mortadella is packaged more prosaically in butcher paper.
CSA farm market basket. I used whole-grain bread from
Unlike some dishes (say, pici al cacio e pepe), there don’t seem to be rules about chicken alla cacciatora that Italians would fight in the streets about. So I decided to go with my own instincts for coaxing chicken to deliver hearty autumnal flavors.
Fall is also the season for wild mushrooms, so I surrounded the chicken, nestled on a bed of polenta, with sautéed pioppini mushrooms resembling dark enoki. Hen of the woods mushrooms, shiitake, cremini or a mixture would also be good choices. For the lucky mushroom-hunting souls who live in places like California or northern Arizona, porcini are an option.
In Tuscany, it’s easy to be a lazy cook and still eat well.
No need for brodo! Vegetables, including onion and some kind of greens, create their own broth. Each serving, as it’s dished up, is enriched by adding bread, grated hard cheese and, most important, an egg poached in the soup itself.
I learned to make ribollita many years ago from Livio, the gardener of an elegant villa in Florence. At the time it housed a center for advanced Renaissance studies and while my husband attended seminars, I was likely to be in the garden, talking to Livio.
Rosy slices of grilled steak on a bed of dressed arugula, with Parmigiano Reggiano shavings and a few ripe tomato wedges. in 2016 that dish sounds pleasing but hardly surprising. In the summer of 1985, though, during a sultry July in Tuscany, it seemed fresh and new. Suddenly this steak and arugula salad was everywhere.
Returning from an early fall visit to friends in North Carolina, I tucked green Cherokee tomatoes into every corner of my suitcase. When they ripened, I set aside two from this precious bounty, bought a prime steak (go to 
Even though we can get them anytime, foods like asparagus, ham and eggs still trigger thoughts of spring. That’s also when quiche gets its annual rebirth, at brunches and such. But here’s something better: this Italian asparagus, ham and ricotta pie, a variety of torta salata (“savory pie”).
I’ve given and eaten many a Christmas 
