The Manestrini Oil Mill was one stop on our drive from Lake Iseo to Trento. It was founded by Frantoio Manestrini in 1960. Their mill is on the ruins of a 14th century Franciscan monastery, where they cultivated olive trees and produced oil centuries ago. Today, his daughter Nicoletta leads the company. Nicoletta gave us a tour of the property and lots of information about their business, olives, and more.

She told us that Italy has 500 varieties of olives. Her mill harvests 3,000 olive trees including four different varieties of olives. They also have a variety of antique olive producing equipment that she showed us.

Their mill has olive groves surrounding it and we got out into the olive trees, which were large and healthy looking.

We inspected all their equipment, both outside and inside their mill. The current olive processing equipment looks to be very high-tech.

In the second photo, you might also notice that parts of the operation appeared very similar to wine-making.

The bottling end of the operation definitely looked smaller and more hands on than wine.

We had an olive oil tasting with five varieties of olive oil.

I can't remember but I'm not sure we made any stops on this trip that didn't include being served some food. The olive mill was no exception. We were served olive tapenade, olive pastes on toast, cured meats, cheeses, and jam.