About Scandelaia

In the early 1990s, our family bought a ruin.

The farmhouse at Scandelaia, over the hills of Chianti, had been abandoned. The stone terraces that once held olive trees, wheat and vines were buried under decades of scrub and bramble. We arrived and as we heard the distant church bells ringing we realised this was a sign - gazing out over uninterrupted countryside stretching 30km towards Siena. We knew then that Scandelaia was something remarkable - this was the beginning of our love and dedication to restoring her.

The Terraces

Restoring Scandelaia took time - thirty years of it. We worked with local craftsmen using the same traditional methods that built the terraces in the first place. Stone by stone, the terraces were restored. The olive trees flourished.

Now 12 acres of terraces are producing again. The olives are hand-picked and cold-pressed on the estate. The oil is certified organic, single-estate, single-harvest - meaning what's in the bottle comes from one place, one season, nothing added and nothing blended. We hope one day to restore the rest of the 25 acres of olive terraces.

The Ceramics

We wanted something to go alongside the oil that was made with the same kind of care. We found it in Cornwall, with Jack Button Ceramics - a studio making handmade pieces that feel honest and considered. Bringing our strong roots of Cornwall, we designed a ceramic bottle to hold the oil. It seemed like a natural fit.

What matters to us

We're not a large producer. We don't blend oils from different estates or bottle across multiple harvests. What we make is specific to this land, this family and this way of doing things.

Provenance. Craft. Honesty about what something is and where it comes from.

That's what Scandelaia is.