Harvest Challenges, Tariffs Don’t Deter Award-Winning Olio Piro

Summary

Award-win­ning Tuscan olive oil pro­ducer Olio Piro, led by sib­lings Romain and Marie-Charlotte Piro, is expand­ing beyond the United States due to ris­ing tar­iffs in its largest mar­ket. Despite chal­lenges from a late har­vest and lower oil yields, the brand’s empha­sis on qual­ity, aes­thet­ics, and unique cul­ti­va­tion meth­ods has helped it stand out and win awards.

Facing ris­ing tar­iffs in its largest mar­ket, award-win­ning Tuscan olive oil pro­ducer Olio Piro is expand­ing beyond the United States.

The brand, led by sib­lings Romain and Marie-Charlotte Piro, recently earned its sixth con­sec­u­tive Gold Award at the 2025 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition for its early-har­vest blend of Leccino, Moraiolo, Frantoio and Olivastra Seggianese olives.

“Winning at the NYIOOC is val­i­da­tion,” Marie-Charlotte said. ​“It means that we are on the right path, and peo­ple get it.”

“ The award pays back all the hard work, so it’s a very sat­is­fy­ing feel­ing,” Romain added.

Founded in 2020, Olio Piro merges Romain’s two-decade pas­sion for high-qual­ity olive oil pro­duc­tion with Marie-Charlotte’s back­ground in lux­ury mar­ket­ing. The result is an extra vir­gin olive oil that empha­sizes qual­ity and aes­thet­ics, down to its min­i­mal­ist label.

“ I ended up in Tuscany in 2002, dis­cov­ered high-qual­ity local olive oil in 2005, and bought my first olive grove in 2008,” Romain said.

He quickly became enam­ored with the prod­uct and immersed him­self in the world of high-qual­ity pro­duc­tion.

“I was com­pletely addicted to the tech­nol­ogy, the tech­niques, the rules to respect and the elders teach­ing you what to do, what not to do and how to do it,” Piro said.

Part of what helps Olio Piro stand out is Romain’s care­ful atten­tion in the mill, includ­ing adjust­ing aspects of milling, malax­ing and cen­trifug­ing for every batch. ​“You have to change the setup to get the best out of each vari­ety,” he said.

Over time, Romain started to see very good results from his milling and began sell­ing his small-scale extra vir­gin olive oil, less than 1,000 bot­tles, door-to-door at restau­rants, includ­ing Michelin-starred ones, in Paris.

When Romain started pro­duc­ing olive oil, he was already focused on har­vest­ing green olives in October and November, sac­ri­fic­ing yield for more potent fla­vors and aro­mas, a prac­tice that was not widely adopted at the time.

“It was the begin­ning, when peo­ple started to real­ize that extra vir­gin olive oil was more like an ingre­di­ent to use in the kitchen, in your cook­ing, and more than just some­thing you leave on the table to put few drops at the end for maybe not such a good expe­ri­ence,” Romain said. 

“We were at the cross­roads between a sim­ple prod­uct and a very elab­o­rate, very high-qual­ity prod­uct,” he added, draw­ing par­al­lels between increas­ing fine wine pro­duc­tion and appre­ci­a­tion.

Heading into 2018, how­ever, Romain wanted to increase his mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion in the United States. He even­tu­ally con­vinced his sis­ter, Marie-Charlotte, who pre­vi­ously worked in mar­ket­ing in the U.S., to join.

“ I needed help with all the mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion,” Romain said. “ I know my skills, and they were not all the required ones. But I knew my sis­ter had those skills, so I was push­ing her to join.”

He even­tu­ally suc­ceeded with Marie-Charlotte join­ing in 2020 to develop a new brand, Olio Piro.

“I had a career in lux­ury sales and mar­ket­ing,” Marie-Charlotte said. “ I worked with lux­ury prod­ucts. I know the lux­ury mar­ket­ing and sales tech­niques.”

As a result, the Piro sib­lings decided to posi­tion Olio Piro as a lux­ury prod­uct, start­ing with the label. 

“The olive oil has to smell and taste per­fect. It has to respond per­fectly to the lab analy­sis,” Romain said. ​“But the bot­tle also has to look good.”

One item notably absent from the label is the depic­tion of olives or an olive tree. ​“Extra vir­gin olive oil is writ­ten on the label, so we don’t need to show an olive tree, an olive leaf or an olive,” Romain said.

“The gold leaf label hasn’t changed,” Marie-Charlotte added. ​“We love the clas­sic black text with large amounts of white space and embossed logo. It’s a lux­ury look.”

She clar­i­fied that when she refers to lux­ury, she does not mean high retail prices for the sake of being expen­sive.

“ We cater to an audi­ence that we are cre­at­ing year after year; peo­ple who did­n’t real­ize that they are not only food­ies, but they under­stand the true sense of lux­ury,” Marie-Charlotte said. 

“I’m not talk­ing about money or hav­ing a high dis­pos­able income,” she added. ​“I’m talk­ing about own­ing a prod­uct that makes you feel good, lit­er­ally.”

While Romain sold almost all of his extra vir­gin olive oil in France before rebrand­ing as Olio Piro, the com­pany now sells almost exclu­sively in the U.S. 

However, the recently announced ten per­cent base­line tar­iff on all imports ot the U.S., com­bined with the poten­tial for these to rise to 20 per­cent tar­iffs later in the year, has resulted in the com­pany seek­ing out new mar­kets.

”We exported 100 per­cent of our pro­duc­tion to the U.S. before 2025,” Marie-Charlotte said. ​“This year, we exported 95 per­cent to the U.S. and are also sell­ing in the United Kingdom and South Korea. We will also be sell­ing in Germany and Canada next year.”

“ The U.S. is still by far our largest export now,” she added. ​“But we also decided this year to accel­er­ate our global expan­sion,” due to the uncer­tainty around U.S. tar­iffs.

Due to the early har­vest, Olio Piro has already exported all of its extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duced in the 2024/25 crop year to the U.S., so its prices will not be affected this year. 

“Let’s see what next year brings,” Marie-Charlotte said. ​“For the next har­vest, we’ll be ready to export to Canada, Germany and South Korea if we can­not bring the prod­uct into the U.S. in decent con­di­tions. Small pro­duc­ers like us can­not be counted on to absorb all the tar­iff, and we can­not count on small retail­ers like our whole­sale part­ners to absorb it.”

The uncer­tainty cre­ated by U.S. tar­iffs comes after a suc­cess­ful albeit unusual har­vest in the moun­tain­ous south­ern Tuscan region of Maremma.

“2024 was a very dif­fer­ent year from the oth­ers because the har­vest started quite late,” Marie-Charlotte said.

Romain added that the har­vest did not start until October 20^th. While he empha­sized that every year is dif­fer­ent, the early har­vest usu­ally gets under­way between late September and early October.

“ This year we started quite late, the fruit ripened quite late, and we always har­vest at the peak of matu­rity,” he said. ​“It was very dry until the end of September, and then it started to rain. You can’t har­vest right after the rain. You need to wait for the fruit to dry.”

“ It was a lit­tle tricky… because there was too much water inside the olive, which means you have to work a bit harder in the mill,” Romain added. ​“But the qual­ity was still there, and it was very high.”

However, these con­di­tions may also have resulted in oil yields being con­sid­er­ably lower than in pre­vi­ous years, a phe­nom­e­non expe­ri­enced by pro­duc­ers across Italy.

“For the first two or three weeks, we got between eight and ten per­cent. This is crazy low,” Romain said. ​“Of course, after one month, the fruit is a lit­tle more ripe and the water has dried up, so we ended up with around 15 or 16 per­cent when some­times we fin­ish pro­duc­tion at around 20 per­cent.”

However, Romain’s instincts were vin­di­cated by the World Competition analy­sis team. Part of what helped the brand stand out was the inclu­sion of the endemic Olivastra Seggianese olive, the 300-year-old trees from which the olives are har­vested, and the region’s unique cul­ti­va­tion method.

“It’s a very old Tuscan tech­nique, graft­ing trees with other vari­eties that has been done for gen­er­a­tions,” Marie-Charlotte said. ​“A lot of trees in the region are grafted with the three Tuscan olives; they have Leccino, Moraiolo and Frantoio olives on one tree. In that way, our blend is made in the grove.”