Count the hands a typical bottle of grocery-store olive oil passes through. The farmer sells to a cooperative or trader. The trader sells to a broker. The broker sells bulk oil to a blending house. The blender supplies a bottling company. The bottler ships to a distributor, the distributor to a warehouse, the warehouse to the store. Seven or eight sets of hands — and at each one, time passes, freshness fades, and responsibility gets thinner.
Middlemen do not just take a margin. They take accountability. When the oil finally disappoints, no link in that chain grew it, and no link answers for it.
Posterino’s chain has one link. Our family grows the olives in San Procopio, harvests them by hand, mills them within hours at our own frantoio, stores the oil under nitrogen, and bottles it on the estate. The name on the gate is the name on the bottle. We did not shorten the supply chain as a marketing exercise; there was simply never anyone between our trees and your table — and after six generations, there never will be.
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