The press that makes the difference
Cold pressing is a term that appears on a great many olive oil labels. What it means in practice depends entirely on where and how the pressing happens. Not all cold presses are equal — and the facility, the equipment, the person running it and the care taken at every stage all show up, eventually, in the chemistry of the oil.
We bring our harvest to Chiavalon. It is the finest cold-press facility in the region, and one of the most technically advanced in Istria. It is not the cheapest option available to a small producer. It is, without question, the right one.
Six years in the making.
The Chiavalon press outside Vodnjan took six years to design and build. The architecture is deliberately striking — a contemporary structure set among olive groves, built for purpose rather than appearance, though it manages both. For most of the year it is a calm, unhurried space: a working press, a tasting room, a shop where Chiavalon's own celebrated oils are available to try and buy. For three to four weeks each October, it becomes something else entirely.
What precision actually looks like.
Italian-engineered precision pressing equipment, chosen for both quality output and minimal oxidation during the milling process.
Temperature is monitored and maintained at every stage of pressing. Even small deviations upward accelerate oxidation and polyphenol loss.
After pressing, oil is held in controlled-atmosphere stainless steel tanks blanketed with inert gas — eliminating oxygen contact entirely.
Pomace to organic fertiliser. Olive stone to biofuel. Press filter waste to natural fire starters. Every by-product of the press has a second life.
Every producer who presses at Chiavalon receives a complete chemical analysis of their oil. The figures on our label come from this report.
Chiavalon produces its own single-estate extra virgin olive oils to international acclaim. The facility we use for Taroncino is the same one that produces some of the finest oil in the region. That context matters.
The moment the harvest becomes oil.
The harvest day begins before dawn with nets laid out across the Taronco. By the time the last olive is boxed, the cassettes cleaned, the van loaded and the short drive to Vodnjan made, it is usually late. The pickers are tired in the specific way that comes from a day of sustained physical work outdoors — satisfied and exhausted in equal measure.
What greets you at Chiavalon on pressing night is not what you might expect from a precision technical facility. You hear it before you see it — music, loud and energising, from a sound system that takes its job seriously. Sometimes local musicians supplement it. The doors of the press are open. Inside, it is warm and bright and busy with small producers from across the region, all arriving with the same thing: the day's harvest, crates of olives representing months of anticipation and hours of backbreaking work.
At the centre of it is Tedi Chiavalon — always present, always welcoming, moving between producers with a kind of unhurried calm that is remarkable given the organised chaos around him. He congratulates everyone, helps unload, ensures the olives are correctly logged and sequenced, answers questions about the previous year's results, and makes absolutely certain that everyone has a drink in hand before they think about leaving.
The free bar — local wines, spirits, and a self-serve tap of ice-cold beer — is not an afterthought. After a day of lifting 25-kilogram cassettes from blowing machines to vans to 1,000-kilogram press crates, a cold beer poured by your own hand is one of the finer things available to a human being. It tastes, quite simply, extraordinary.
“Frenetic, wonderfully chaotic and above all, just really friendly, inclusive local fun. It makes a little social highlight at the end of a very long day. And makes you forget for a minute that you need to get up and do it all again tomorrow.”
Sandi and Tedi Chiavalon.
Chiavalon is a family business in the fullest sense — built from the ground up by two brothers, rooted in a story that begins not with a business plan but with a boy and his grandfather's olive trees.
Sandi Chiavalon started tending the family's fifty ancient trees outside Vodnjan as a teenager in 1997, after his grandfather fell ill and there was nobody else to do it. While his peers were riding bikes, Sandi was learning everything he could about the olive — eventually studying at the Agricultural School in Poreč and the Faculty of Agronomy in Zagreb, and introducing ecological production methods and innovations to the family holding that would go on to earn international recognition. His brother Tedi joined him, and their mother with them, and what began as one young man's unconventional hobby grew, over years of sustained work, into one of Istria's most celebrated olive oil operations.
Today Chiavalon farms 12,000 trees of predominantly indigenous varieties — supplemented by around 10,000 more from family cooperative growers in the surrounding area — under fully licensed organic certification. The facility we use to press and store our harvest is the one the Chiavalon family built over six years to produce their own award-winning oil. The standard they hold their own production to is the same standard they apply to everyone who presses there. When Tedi is at the centre of pressing night — welcoming every producer, helping unload, making sure everyone has a drink — that hospitality is an extension of the same ethos that built the place. We are grateful to both brothers for it.
Their own oils are available at the Chiavalon shop and tasting bar in Vodnjan, and are worth your time.
“We pay considerably more to press at Chiavalon than we would at a local alternative. The chemical analysis on our label is a direct result of that decision. We would make it again without hesitation.”
Why the press matters.
Smaller local presses vary enormously in temperature control, equipment condition and processing speed. The difference between a well-controlled 20°C press and an uncontrolled one running warmer shows up directly in the acidity, peroxide and polyphenol readings. Our 626 mg/kg polyphenol count is partly the result of the varieties and the harvest timing — and partly the result of where and how they were pressed.
Controlled temperature throughout. Inert gas storage. Full laboratory analysis per batch. And the assurance that the people processing our harvest care about the outcome as much as we do. The numbers on the label are the evidence. The pressing night is the memory.