The olive harvest

Through November the olive harvest moves across inland Istria, the fruit hand picked and cold pressed within hours, the new oil reaching the breakfast table the same week.

By late October the light turns amber and the harvest opens. Nets are spread beneath the trees, the branches combed by hand, and the morning's fruit is pressed cold that same day, the one way to hold the whole of its taste.

Fresh Istrian extra virgin oil pours green and grassy, with a peppery catch at the back of the throat that marks it young and alive, best taken cloudy over warm bread with a single pinch of salt, one of the finest things you will eat all year.

There is good reason to make a point of it. The Flos Olei guide, the world's reference for olive oil, has named Istria the finest olive oil region on earth for more than a decade running. The oil on your table is pressed a few kilometres from the house, from Istrian cultivars, Buža, Istarska bjelica and Leccino, drawn from this season's fruit, and a bottle of the year's pressing travels home with you.

A morning in the grove is easily arranged, slow and companionable, and it ends in the first taste of the new oil. October and November hold it, the weeks when the olive and the white truffle share the same table.