Ever since 1999, we have virtually subverted the traditional methods of olive growing in the Madonie. Since the year 2000, thirty hectares of new intensive agriculture, using the best domestic varieties of olive, are being cultivated alongside forty hectares of extensive agriculture, with century-old olive trees bearing traditional local varieties of fruit. The groves are set out in long rows on espaliers, laid out so as to allow for a density of a thousand plants per hectare, compared to the traditional hundred and twenty. The plants are cultivated with a central leader and new growth is restrained, so as to allow for easier pruning and harvesting. The groves are well-irrigated, which guarantees constant production both from a qualitative and quantitative aspect. This has also eliminated the problem of alternating production, meanwhile the time it takes the plants to start producing has gone down to two years.
But Tornisìa also has an eye to the past, as first we decided to use only the Crastu variety of olives that can be found exclusively in the Madonie Park in making the “Oleaster” extra virgin olive oil, a mono variety with an unusual, unique flavour. As the “Tornisìa” -  a blend of the Giarraffa and Biancolilla varieties -  it is produced in century-old olive groves; these are oils with a familiar taste, evocative of the ancient olive trees with their dark snarled trunks and their branches that reach up to the sky and roots that are firmly planted so as to draw their nourishment from the depths of the earth.