A true novello: the first oil off the mill each season, from the earliest pick at Finca Vista Alegre, sold while it lasts and gone by spring. It is also, at 837 mg/kg, the highest-phenolic oil in our library — the number you get when olives go under a cold press within four hours of being picked green, and when roughly fourteen kilos of fruit are spent on a single litre.
Startlingly green in the glass and on the nose: tomato vine, green apple and green almond, with an unusual floral top note the producer calls lavender and which our panel read as something closer to fresh herbs. The attack is fruity and surprisingly harmonious for the phenolic load; bitterness stays moderate while pungency arrives at once rather than building, with the faint prickle on the tongue that only very young oil has. What it lacks is the roundness that three or four months in a tank would give it — and that absence is the entire point of buying a novello.
The facts
Cultivar
100% Picual
Harvest
October 2025 — first pick of the season
Polyphenols
837 mg/kg (producer lab report, 2025/26)
Free acidity
0.15%
Yield
≈ 10–14 kg of olives per litre
Extraction
Cold, within 4 hours of picking
Estate
Finca Vista Alegre, Jaén
Availability
Seasonal — one bottling a year
Awards
99/100 · Flos Olei 2026 (producer)
Where it's from
Region map · Jaén
Finca Vista Alegre lies in central Jaén with a distinct Mediterranean microclimate; it is also the grove behind the estate's Centenarium Premium.
Toasted breadBean and lentil soupsGrilled vegetablesBurrataA pinch of sea salt
Reviews
1 expert
P
Tasting panel · bestoliveoils.euPanel note · September 2026
Panel pick★★★★★Rated 4.7 out of 5
Novello is a seasonal event, not a pantry oil, and it has to be judged on those terms. Judged that way this is excellent: enormous green fruit, a phenolic count higher than anything else we have measured, and — the part that surprised us — enough balance that it never turns harsh. Note the acidity, 0.15%, slightly above the estate's own house standard: that is the tax you pay for milling the very first, hardest fruit of the year, and it is not a fault. Pour it generously within weeks of buying, over soup or bread. By March it will be a good oil rather than a remarkable one. For the same estate's Picual in a form that keeps, buy Eco Day.