Colonna

On Molise’s undulating green hills lie Marina Colonna’s olives groves. The Bosco Pontoni estate has been in the family since the early 1880s and Marina inherited the farm from her father, Don Francesco Colonna, in 1996. Here, on over her 55 hectares of olive groves, you can find more than fifteen different olive cultivars of both local and experimental varieties.

 Marina’s first job when she began to work with her father was to create a unique bottle for their olive oil. She took a Roman anfora from the family collection and an image of a column, the family crest, to the famous Tuscan glassmakers Vetreria Etrusca and asked their graphic designers to combine these elements into a bottle. It was this bottle she pulled out of her bag in a restaurant in Sloane Square when she and Charles first met more than 35 years ago. The meeting, the bottle, and Marina’s oil were an instant success. We wondered if it was too successful when in 1992 Tom Jaine, then editor of The Good Food Guide, wrote of Alistair Little’s restaurant ‘.. if there is a homogeneous quality to a number of the cold first courses, maybe it is from the overuse of Colonna Extra Virgin Olive Oil.’

Marina still works tirelessly on the farm, and now her son, Eugenio, has started to become involved with the design and packaging. The anfora bottle remains the same, but with refreshed labels and new products have been added to the range. Capers, handpicked on the Aeolian Islands where Marina & Eugenio spend their summers, are salted and beautifully packaged in small jars to join the range of olives which are grown on the farm.

Shortly after their first meeting Charles placed an order, writing, ‘I hope that this will be the first of many’. And so it was, and long may it continue.