Oliena, the enhancer

Oliena is only for oil. It is something expressly dedicated to oil.

If you will, it is the place of places, where space is created and defined in which oil is enhanced at best.

It is somehow like a lake. Imagine the classic oil lake: it can be yellow, green, dense, transparent: pure and deep gold.

Telling the story of oil is like entering the life of those who do this, penetrating the density and transparency of those who ethically produce it, the colour that each area can express.

Oliena is an enhancer. It is ideal to grasp all signs that are normally concealed by the typical oak green or dark green bottle, where everything is hidden.

I have designed Oliena to create a moment of expectation, of rest and, together, an opportunity to once again find what is normally lost in oil.

Calendario dell’olio 2014

Oil is no longer concealed to the sight. It is displayed for the time needed to enjoy the colour and values defining oil, before it is consumed.

Oil must is not decanted as wine is, it is enhanced, it can express its authentic identity.

Oliena shape, with its curves and sinuous lines, stems from thoroughly calculated analysis, conceived to offer all messages we look for in extra virgin olive oil and we often cannot really grasp.

Think about a lake. About its width-depth ratio, with its slopes allowing reading oil transparency. The juice of olives is immersed in the white colour of Oliena, a refined colour, the right white that does not contaminate the colour of oil and one side is the peduncle, or channel, needed to perceive the density of oil only looking at it.

Besides pouring oil onto bread, through the channel –as Valle Argentina river in Liguria I have drawn inspiration from –one can collect all oil flavour in that oil lake, maybe with a shrimp, some celery, a carrot root, an artichoke leaf or everything that can inspire imagination.

On the table, Oliena enhances oil, but it also does it with dining companions, because they can find pleasure, also visual pleasure, which is experienced in a moment, but keeps living in memory.

Mauro Olivieri