Centonze Olive Oil: Four Bottles, Four Different Claims
Centonze olive oil is unusual in a way that is easy to miss on the shelf: the same family grove sells four different oils, and each one makes a different legal promise. One carries a protected designation of origin, one carries organic certification, one carries a regional geographical indication, and one carries nothing at all beyond the word Riserva — which the company itself is careful to tell you means nothing about quality. Understanding which is which is most of what a buyer needs, and it is not something the front label does for you.
For our own oil, see our cold-pressed organic Marrakech olive oil.
The Short Answer
- Centonze is Azienda Agricola Centonze Antonino, and its published address is Castelvetrano in the province of Trapani — not Partanna, which is a common mix-up because both sit in the Valle del Belice.
- The estate is called Case di Latomie, named for the ancient quarries that supplied the stone for Selinunte, about seven kilometres away. The company dates itself to 1953.
- Four olive oil lines, four different claims: DOP Valle del Belice, Biologico (EU organic), IGP Sicilia, and a Riserva blend that carries no designation.
- Centonze states plainly that "Riserva" refers only to the small quantity produced and not to any production process or organoleptic merit. That is an unusually candid thing for a producer to print.
- Cultivars named: Nocellara del Belice, Cerasuola and Biancolilla. Percentages are never given.
- The harvest is stated to begin around 20 September, the fruit is hand-picked, and the company says it is cold-milled within four hours. Since October 2016 part of the crop has been picked and pressed at night.
- Every product page carries an Anno di Raccolta — a crop year. Most producers in this category do not publish one, and it is the single most useful number on any bottle.
- What Centonze does not publish is any laboratory chemistry at all: no free acidity, no peroxide value, no ultraviolet coefficients, no polyphenol figure, no panel score, no named laboratory. Sidr & Stone does not publish a polyphenol figure either, and we will not imply one.
Where Centonze Actually Is — and Why It Is Not Partanna
This needs settling first, because a good deal of writing about Sicilian oil gets it wrong. Centonze's own footer gives its address as SS 115, 91022 Castelvetrano, in the province of Trapani. Its catalogue describes the estate as lying in the territory of Castelvetrano, in the Valle del Belice, seven kilometres from Selinunte. The word Partanna does not appear anywhere on the company's site.
The confusion is understandable. Partanna is a hill town a few miles away in the same valley, it lends its name to a well-known olive oil brand, and both places sit in the heartland of the same olive. But they are different towns and different companies. If you are looking for the Partanna brand and its parent mill, that is a separate business and we have written about it in our piece on Paesano olive oil, which covers the same district from the other side.
Castelvetrano is worth knowing in its own right, because it is where Nocellara del Belice comes from — the large green olive sold internationally under the town's name. A producer bottling Nocellara in Castelvetrano is about as close to the source of that variety as it is possible to get.
Case di Latomie: The Quarries, the Grove and the Cultivars
The estate takes its name from the latomie — the quarries the Greeks cut from around 800 BC to raise the temples at Selinunte. Centonze describes the setting as an archaeo-olive landscape, which sounds like marketing until you look at the geology: shallow calcareous soil over cut limestone, which is exactly the sort of poor, free-draining ground that suits an olive and suits very little else.
The company's downloadable catalogue puts the operation at 18,850 olive trees across 94 hectares, entirely fenced. It names three native cultivars — Nocellara del Belice, Cerasuola and Biancolilla — and notes that Nocellara is the only Italian olive to hold two separate protected designations, one for oil and one for the table.
What it never gives is a percentage. The DOP and organic lines are described as mono-cultivar Nocellara, but the DOP category page hedges with principalmente — mainly — which is honest, since the designation itself permits a minority of other varieties. The IGP and Riserva lines are described as a blend of all three without any ratio. For the flavour logic behind those three varieties and the rules that govern the valley, our guide to Sicilian olive oil sets out the DOP zones and their cultivar requirements in full.
Four Bottles, Four Different Legal Claims
This is the part worth the reader's attention, and as far as we can tell nobody sets it out. Four bottles from one grove, and the words on them are not degrees of the same quality — they are answers to four different questions.
| Line | Designation | Cultivars named | What the designation actually promises |
|---|---|---|---|
| D.O.P. Valle del Belice | Protected Designation of Origin | Nocellara del Belice, described as mono-cultivar | That growing, milling and bottling all happened inside the defined zone, to a written specification, checked by a certifier |
| Biologico | EU organic | Nocellara del Belice, described as mono-cultivar | How the trees were grown — no synthetic inputs, audited annually. It says nothing about origin or milling |
| I.G.P. Sicilia | Protected Geographical Indication | Nocellara del Belice, Cerasuola, Biancolilla | A looser umbrella than a DOP: at least one stage of production happened in Sicily |
| Riserva Blend | None | Nocellara del Belice, Cerasuola, Biancolilla | Nothing. Centonze states the word refers only to the small quantity produced, not to any process or organoleptic merit |
That last row is the one to sit with. "Riserva" on a wine label is regulated; on an olive oil label it is not, and most producers using it are content to let the buyer draw the flattering inference. Centonze prints the correction itself. We have read a great many producer sites for this series and that is the first time we have seen a company pre-emptively deflate its own premium-sounding word.
Two practical consequences follow. First, the DOP bottle is the only one that ties the oil to the valley by law; the IGP bottle ties it only to Sicily. Second, organic and DOP are separate schemes answering separate questions, so a bottle can hold one, both, or neither — a point our guide to organic olive oil works through in more detail. Centonze's catalogue names a different certifying body for each: CCPB for the organic line, Agroqualità for the DOP, and the Sicilian regional institute for the IGP.
The Four-Hour Window: What Centonze Publishes About Harvest and Milling
Process disclosure is where this producer is genuinely strong, and it is worth reading closely because the detail is specific rather than atmospheric.
| Stage | What Centonze states |
|---|---|
| Harvest window | Beginning around 20 September and running through October, sometimes extending to the end of November and beyond depending on the weather and the size of the crop |
| Picking method | Brucatura a mano — hand-stripping from the tree, with the fruit carried in perforated crates |
| Time to mill | Within four hours of picking |
| Crushing | A hammer crusher on a continuous-cycle Vitone V4 plant |
| Separation | Centrifugal decanter; the catalogue specifies a two-phase cold continuous cycle |
| Temperature | Stated never to exceed 27 °C, which is the threshold behind the words "cold extracted" |
| Night harvest | Since October 2016, part of the crop is picked and pressed entirely at night, bottled as "Chiaro di Luna" |
| Storage and bottling | Stainless steel under a blanket of nitrogen, with bottling also carried out under nitrogen |
| Crop year on the bottle | Yes — every current product page gives an Anno di Raccolta, and states the oil uses only olives from that harvest |
The four-hour figure is the one that carries weight. Free acidity rises with the time fruit spends sitting in a crate, and an early start to the harvest means firmer, greener fruit with more phenolic content to protect. A grower who both starts in September and mills within four hours has removed the two commonest causes of a mediocre oil before the press is even switched on.
The night harvest is a smaller but real point. Picking in cool air lowers the fruit's temperature going into the mill, and Centonze says it reduces free acidity and peroxide value — though it gives no figures to support that, which is a pattern we will come back to.
And the crop year deserves specific credit. Across the producers we have examined in this series, a harvest year on the product page is the exception rather than the rule; a best-before date is far more common and far less useful, because it tells you what the bottler predicts rather than how old the oil already is. Centonze prints the year. That is a small thing that makes a real difference at the shelf.
Veiled, Not Unfiltered: A Third State Most Guides Miss
Filtration is usually presented as a binary — filtered or unfiltered — and Centonze sits in a third position that is worth naming, because it is common among careful producers and almost never explained.
The company describes natural settling followed by filtration; its catalogue specifies that filtration as sgrossatura, which means a coarse pass rather than a polishing one, followed by inert-gas storage. Its own product copy then describes the resulting oil as having a very high density and a velatura — a veil. The words "unfiltered" and non filtrato never appear.
So the oil is neither bright-polished nor left entirely raw. The coarse pass removes the heavier vegetable solids and residual water that shorten a bottle's life, while leaving enough fine suspended material to keep the cloudy appearance and some of the character that goes with it. Under nitrogen, that is a defensible middle path rather than a fudge.
Sidr & Stone's own oil is unfiltered, and may show natural sediment in the bottle. We are not going to pretend that is strictly superior — solids do shorten shelf life, which is precisely the problem a coarse filtration is solving. Our guide to filtered against unfiltered olive oil sets out the trade-off without pretending there is a single right answer.
What Centonze Publishes, and What It Doesn't
Read against its peers, this producer is strong on certification and process and silent on measurement. The pattern is worth laying out plainly, including where we come off worse.
| Published? | Centonze (Azienda Agricola Centonze Antonino) | Sidr & Stone |
|---|---|---|
| Named production site | Yes — Castelvetrano, Trapani, with a company address and VAT number | Yes — a single family grove on the plains outside Marrakech |
| Cultivars named | Yes — Nocellara del Belice, Cerasuola, Biancolilla. No percentages | Not currently published |
| Organic status | Certified, with a certifying body named in its catalogue. No operator code published | Organically grown, not certified organic — stated plainly |
| Protected designation | Yes — DOP Valle del Belice and IGP Sicilia lines | None. Morocco has no equivalent designation for this grove |
| Harvest dates and method | Yes — window, hand-stripping, four hours to mill, night harvest since 2016 | Single harvest, cold-pressed within hours; no published window |
| Crop year on the product page | Yes | Single harvest, first pressing |
| Filtration status | Coarse filtration under nitrogen; product described as veiled | Unfiltered; may show natural sediment |
| Free acidity, peroxide, K232/K270 | No | No |
| Total polyphenols, mg/kg | No | No — and we will not imply one |
| Named laboratory or method | No. The site states that rigorous analyses are carried out, without publishing any result | No |
| Food-safety process certification | Yes — BRC and IFS claimed | Halal certified |
Two honest notes on sourcing. Centonze's recognitions page is headed 2010 to 2025 but presents its awards as a wall of certificate images with no text captions, so we have not repeated specific competition names or years from it — a claim we cannot read in the page's own words is a claim we will not put in a reader's head. The one award the site does state in prose, twice, is that the company was declared a Slow Food Presidium for extra virgin olive oil in May 2015. And several of the more specific process details — the tree count, the two-phase cycle, the coarse filtration — appear only in the downloadable catalogue rather than on the web pages, which is a small transparency gap rather than a failing.
The Objections Worth Taking Seriously
"A DOP and a shelf of awards — isn't that enough?" It is a great deal, and more than most. But a designation certifies where and how, not how good this bottle is, and a competition medal is awarded to a sample submitted in a particular year. Neither is a measurement that travels with the bottle in your hand. That is not a criticism unique to Centonze; it is the shape of the whole category.
"Does a four-hour milling window really change anything?" Yes, and it is one of the few process claims with a clear mechanism behind it. Once fruit is picked it begins to respire and, if bruised or piled deep, to ferment; free acidity climbs with every hour. Four hours is genuinely fast. Whether it produced a good oil this year is a separate question the number cannot answer.
"You have no DOP and no organic certificate — isn't this convenient?" It is a fair challenge and we will not dodge it. Centonze holds a protected designation of origin, EU organic certification and two international process certifications; we hold none of those. We describe our oil as organically grown rather than certified organic because that is the true statement. What we offer instead is one grove, one season, one ingredient, and a willingness to say plainly what we have not yet measured.
Why Sidr & Stone
Every article in this series ends at the same question: how much is the producer telling you, and how much are you being asked to assume? Centonze answers it better than most on process and certification, and not at all on chemistry. We would rather be judged on the same terms.
- Single-estate — one family-owned grove on the plains outside Marrakech, Morocco; no blending across origins
- Rain-fed — no irrigation; the trees take what the season gives
- Organically grown — no synthetic fertilisers, pesticides or herbicides
- Single harvest — a small, limited batch; once the season's pressing is gone, it is gone until next year
- Cold-pressed within hours of harvest — flavour, aroma and polyphenols preserved
- Unfiltered extra virgin — minimally processed, and it may show natural sediment
- 100% natural — one ingredient, olive oil, no additives and nothing else
- Dark glass with a gold label — protective packaging against light
- Halal certified
- 10% of profits to charity, across every Sidr & Stone product
- Fulfilment in the UK, EU, and US
One more credit where it is due: Centonze's olive oil pages carry no health or disease claims at all. In a category where wellness copy is routine, a producer that simply describes its oil and stops is doing something quietly correct, and we would rather say so than pretend the comparison runs only one way.
We will not tell you Sidr & Stone is the best olive oil — that would be the very claim this article warns against. What we will say is that our oil is single-estate Moroccan, rain-fed, organically grown, and cold-pressed within hours of harvest — and that the evidence of that care is in the taste, the colour, and the season's small limited batch.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Centonze olive oil?
It is the extra virgin olive oil of Azienda Agricola Centonze Antonino, a family estate in western Sicily trading under the name Case di Latomie and dating itself to 1953. It sells four separate lines, each carrying a different certification.
Where is Centonze olive oil made?
In Castelvetrano, in the province of Trapani, within the Valle del Belice and about seven kilometres from the Greek site of Selinunte. It is often placed in Partanna by mistake; Partanna is a neighbouring town in the same valley and a different company's brand.
What olives is Centonze olive oil made from?
Nocellara del Belice, Cerasuola and Biancolilla. The DOP and organic lines are described as mono-cultivar Nocellara del Belice; the IGP and Riserva lines blend all three. No percentages are published.
Is Centonze olive oil DOP certified?
One of its four lines is, under DOP Valle del Belice, with a certifying body named in the company's catalogue. A second line carries IGP Sicilia, which is a looser umbrella requiring only that a stage of production took place in Sicily. The Riserva blend carries no designation.
Is Centonze olive oil filtered or unfiltered?
Neither, strictly. The company describes natural settling followed by a coarse filtration, then storage and bottling under nitrogen, and describes the resulting oil as veiled. The terms "unfiltered" and non filtrato are not used anywhere on its site.
Does Centonze publish laboratory figures for its oil?
No. There is no free acidity value, peroxide value, ultraviolet coefficient, polyphenol content, panel score or named laboratory anywhere on its site or in its catalogues. The site says rigorous analyses are carried out but publishes no result from them.
Where can you buy Centonze olive oil?
From the company's own online shop and through Italian and international speciality retailers; the company says it exports to more than sixty-five countries. Buying from the producer is the surest way to know which of the four lines you are getting, since resellers often list them interchangeably.
Is olive oil a medicine?
No. Olive oil is a food, not a medicine. It has a long traditional history — including being honoured in the Prophetic Sunnah — and a substantial body of modern research, particularly around polyphenols, cardiovascular health, and the Mediterranean diet pattern. It can be a worthwhile part of a healthy routine, but it does not cure diseases and is not a substitute for medical care. Be cautious of any olive oil marketed with specific disease-cure claims.
Final Thoughts
The interesting thing about Centonze is not that it holds a DOP. Plenty of Sicilian producers do. It is that one grove sells four bottles carrying four different kinds of claim, and the company is willing to tell you that the most impressive-sounding of those words — Riserva — means only that there was not much of it. That is the opposite of how the category usually behaves, and it is worth rewarding with attention.
Set against that, the silence on chemistry is conspicuous. A producer that publishes a four-hour milling window, a hammer crusher, a two-phase decanter, a 27 °C ceiling and a nitrogen blanket clearly has the operational discipline to publish a free acidity value, and states that it runs the analyses. Printing the result would cost nothing and would settle in one line what a reader currently has to infer from process.
For a buyer, the practical advice is short. Decide which claim you actually want — origin, farming method, region, or simply scarcity — then buy the line that carries it, and check the crop year, which Centonze prints and many of its competitors do not. For the general version of that exercise, our guide to choosing a quality olive oil covers the rest.
If what you want underneath all of it is the plain thing, our cold-pressed organic Marrakech olive oil — single-estate, rain-fed, organically grown and cold-pressed within hours of harvest — is available to pre-order. First harvest, estimated shipping from November 2026. Fulfilment in the UK, EU, and US.
Pre-Order Sidr & Stone Organic Marrakech Olive Oil — Limited First Harvest →
Disclaimer: This article describes Azienda Agricola Centonze Antonino's products, certifications and published statements as they appeared on the company's own website and downloadable catalogues in August 2026; specifications, ranges and brand practices may change, and readers should check current sources. Comparisons are made in good faith and in fair terms. Olive oil is a food, not a medicine, and is not a substitute for medical treatment of any condition. For any health concern, consult a qualified medical professional.