Mantegna – Frantoio Tini

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Thank you to Frantoio Tini for sending us their Mantegna EVOO.

Producer	Frantoio Tini
Crop Year	2019/2020
Cultivar	Leccio del Corno 100%
Region	Abruzzo
Harvesting Method	Handpicking
Extraction Method	Continuous – Cold Extraction
Milling	Within 4 hours of collection
Tasted on	June 2020

Frantoio Tini is a big name when it comes to Abruzzo olive oil production, for their remarkable attention to quality, their love for the region and olive oil, and their unceasing desire to manufacture a product which every year expresses better and better all its finesse and high quality. Mantegna EVOO assures to the taste a perfect balance, along the thread of green vegetable notes – the basis of EVOO high quality – in the olfactory and gustatory analysis, but also the elegance and finesse of its bitterness and pungency, which prolong the permanence of the EVOO flavour in the mouth in the aftertaste, building up a final feeling of extraordinary cleanness in the mouth; and that is why you should try Mantegna on many different kinds of dishes, vegetables, white meat and pizza in particular!

Read also the review of Caravaggio EVOO by Frantoio Tini here.

Appearance & Visual Analysis

Mantegna EVOO is of a brilliant lime-green colour, rich in yellow highlights.

Scents & Olfactory analysis

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To the nose, Mantegna EVOO has a great intensity – green vegetable scents of cut grass, green almond, artichoke and rocket fulfil your senses; then follow light citrus scents of green bergamot fruit, along with flavour notes of aromatic herbs (especially thyme) and spicy tones of white pepper.

Tasting: Aromas & Flavours

Pungency

Bitterness

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It’s in the tasting analysis that one can truly appreciate the equilibrium and fineness of Mantegna EVOO, highlighted by the perfect coherence between taste and aroma; in fact, to the tasting, Mantegna expresses green almond, artichoke, walnut husk and rocket flavours, enriched by tones of Mediterranean pot herbs (i.e. basil) and spicy black pepper flavours.

We love it with…

How do we choose the best pairings? Read our short guide on how to combine EVOO and foods.

Its precious green vegetable aromas make Mantegna EVOO especially perfect to go on vegetables, legumes and pizza. And let’s find out why.
As for first courses, we can optimally combine Mantegna with vegetable risotto (read our creamy risotto recipe here): for example, we can try it on risotto with asparagus, spinach, courgettes, or radicchio and 4 cheese; it also perfectly pairs to lentil soups, and other legumes soups. In all these dishes, Mantegna boosts up the vegetal aromatic “charge” which can already be found in those foods, creating as a result the perfect flavour balance.
For the same reasons, Mantegna is very good on vegetables and veggie recipes, for example grilled or stuffed vegetables and especially with mushrooms, whose prominent taste often risks to cover the flavor of EVOOs; another good pairing example is that with patate al cartoccio, a tasty Italian recipe made with potatoes wrapped in silver paper and placed directly in the oven; they can be prepared simply like this or stuffed with salami, but also vegetables and sauce.
The important equilibrium between bitterness and pungency found in Mantegna also allows us to match it to white meat: escalopes, chicken and veal slices, or pork rolls stuffed with ham, cheese and vegetables, just to give you some ideas.

We paired Mantegna with one of the most common summer choices for pizza in Italy: white focaccia with Parma ham, rocket, mozzarella and Pachino tomatoes; all the different tastes considered, it is not easy to find an EVOO to grant the final equilibrium in the palate, but Mantegna really helps to build up this balance, thanks to that of its bitterness and pungency, and its green soul.

Frantoio Tini

Tradition, culture and high quality are Frantoio Tini trademarks.
“Surrounded by the beautiful Abruzzo’s hills, the Oil Mill Tini is family managed on a continuous basis with care and passion since 1921. Handed from generation to generation, the family members have always kept the high standards of quality of the olive milling and the olive oil production. Improving the production process from year to year it stays consistent, deliberately in the handicraft way a cutting-edge processing and a controlled production of an excellent quality olive oil.” (from Frantoio Tini Website)
The attention put in every step of the production process is the key feature of Frantoio Tini, in an effort to constantly increase the quality of their products and the nutraceutical impact of their EVOOs. Their philosophy is also enriched by a pinch of novelty: the Evolution Project, a traceability system thanks to which it is possible to follow the journey of the EVOO production at every step of the process, and to get every information on the provenance of the fruits, and the details and characteristics of the different production phases (e.g. temperature, duration of the malaxing and that of the other stages, bottle barcode).

Frantoio Tini
Contrada Pizzannocca, 1
64035 Castilenti (TE)
Abruzzo – Italy
+39 339 5969504
Frantoio Tini Website

Abruzzo is a small region in Central Italy, bordering Lazio (the region where Rome is located) to the west and the Adriatic sea to the east. Abruzzo is known to be “the greenest region in Europe”, as almost half of its area is set aside as national parks and protected nature reserves. The province of Chieti preserves the autochthonous olive variety of “Gentile di Chieti”; in Pescara we can find the cultivar “Dritta”; Teramo hills host Tortiglione, Castiglionese and Rustica olive trees. Writer Primo Levi defined Abruzzo and its people as “forti e gentili” (strong and gentle), which soon became the region’s motto.
Discover other regions.

The Leccio del Corno cultivar is an olive variety which originated in Tuscany and then spread especially throughout the regions of central Italy; its name comes from that of its area of ​​origin: it was in fact first found in the province of Florence, at Corno farm. Leccio del Corno ripens late, and it has a medium yield in olive oil production; its olive oils are characterized by green almond and artichoke notes of flavours.
Discover other cultivars.