La dolce vita

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The influence of southern Italy’s sun-kissed lifestyle has been lovingly recreated in the midst of South Australia’s wineries. Josephine Brouard meets the Dichiera family.

As you wind your way north out of the town of Clare in South Australia’s picturesque wine-growing Clare Valley, and lope along Farrell Flat Road on your way to the historic copper town of Burra, on your right you will see a sign: ‘Evilo Estate’. Turn into the driveway and crunch across the gravel that snakes in front of an elegant turn-of-the-century homestead and park your vehicle under the trees next to a fence of wild prickly pears. Then, as the honeyed sounds of Andrea Bocelli waft across the 40-degree heatwaves, prepare to step back in time into another world… a rugged, remote and little-known part of Italy called Calabria.

Despite having left the tiny village of Caulonia in this southern province more than 30 years ago, it is Giulio Dichiera’s Italian lineage that has largely inspired the lifestyle he and his Australian wife, Debbie, and their three sons, Adam, Luca and Enzo, enjoy today. Debbie may have never been to Italy – “I long to,” she admits – but the influence of Giulio’s roots on their olive-grove business has been enormous.

Though Adelaide-born, Debbie admits she may be a Calabrian in disguise. Perhaps it’s the influence of Giulio’s late mother, known affectionately to everyone as ‘Nonna’, who shared with her daughter-in-law many of Calabria’s wonderful recipes. In Calabria, pasta is treated with reverence. Each city or town has its own pasta specialities, from chewy fusilli to various types of lasagne, and any cook worth his or her salt knows by instinct the best sauce to pair with each pasta. Many Calabrians also depend on their gardens to supplement their table offerings, which is why tomatoes are a staple. Eggplant is considered the queen of Calabrian vegetables – grilled, fried, roasted or stuffed, no mealtime is the same without them.

It‘s no surprise then that visitors who pop into Evilo Estate are offered eggplant fritters and icy lemonade to quench their hunger and thirst. “We have the perfect Mediterranean climate here,” Debbie explains as she gesticulates in the direction of the olive groves budding languidly in the sunshine. “Olive trees love dry summers and wet winters, and that’s what they’ve got here.”

If you’d told the Dichieras when they first moved to the Clare Valley 16 years ago that they’d be walking in Giulio’s ancestors’ footsteps, they would have been mightily surprised. The couple were simply tired of working seven days a week in their busy and popular North Adelaide coffee shop, and Debbie wanted time out to raise a family. “When we first came here, there was nothing at all except the homestead. When I saw the house, I just knew I had to have it, but as for the rest…” she shrugs, “I never thought I would be bottling jellies, chutneys and marmalades, and selling them alongside our very own extra virgin olive oil.”

Today, Evilo Estate Extra Virgin Olive Oil is a thriving and constantly growing business. When the Dichieras first settled on the outskirts of Clare in the early 1990s, the couple had the idea – as a pastime initially – of establishing an olive grove on their 12-acre property. Giulio subsequently planted an assortment of classic Mediterranean trees, including the Spanish Manzanillo, Greek Koroneiki, Italian Corregiola and French Verdale varieties, and for good measure, a wild, unknown variety that originated from his family property in southern Italy.

For the next five years, while harvesting grapes for the local wineries, Giulio lovingly tended his 1,200-tree grove in the hope of one day enjoying the fruits of his labour. At some expense, he also installed a 50-metre-deep bore to drip-irrigate his trees. Then, in 1997, the couple harvested the grove’s first crop, picking the green and black olives carefully by hand and collecting them in crates.

It’s a testament to the couple’s hard work and dedication that the olives they harvested then, and still do today, have transmuted into an olive oil that delights local palates. Today, the Dichieras have put up their business shingle with pride – Evilo Estate got its name, explains Debbie, by simply spelling ‘olive’ backwards – and the number of olive trees continues to grow. “We’ve put in a couple of trendy olive varieties such as Leccino, Pendolino and Frantoio, and we’re now producing about 1,500 litres of olive oil per year.” The oil is sold in casks, flagons and bottles to the many chefs, restaurants, hotels and caterers in the popular tourist region they inhabit, and there’s never a drop left at the end of each season.

The response to the Dichieras’ olive oil has been so overwhelming (winning awards for its excellence in 2002, 2003 and 2004), Debbie felt pressed to open a cellar door on the property in 2004. This experience has made her increasingly sales-savvy, she confesses, as she begins to understand the interests and appetites of the many visitors who pop into Evilo Estate while on wine tours.

While Giulio is typically in the orchard or shed, physically tending to the state of the crop, there’s nothing Debbie likes more than conducting an olive oil tasting for curious visitors. “Try this,” she entreats as she proffers a platter of sourdough bread. Visitors dip their bread fingers in the oil and smack their lips in appreciation as they compare the fragrance of balsamic-perfumed olive oil with a crisper chilli oil. No-one can make up their mind which oil blend they prefer – each seems to have its own flavour and character, much like wine vintages – and then Debbie invites visitors to compare Evilo Estate Extra Virgin Olive Oil with one of Australia’s favourite imports.

There’s no comparison. Evilo Estate’s oil tastes far better than the imported variety. As her visitors cluck en masse around the tasting table, Debbie’s grin grows proportionately to the mounting enthusiasm. Everyone starts pulling out their wallets in their enthusiasm to take home some of the produce they’ve been enjoying. The sun-dried tomatoes are obviously home-grown – visitors can see for themselves the trays of tomatoes and chillies, slathered with a fine coating of salt to deter insects, basking outside the barn under an exceedingly hot sun.

And then there are Debbie’s jellies, chutneys and marmalades to complement the wine, cheese and olive platters that are de rigueur in this wine-quaffing part of the world. Inspired by Nonna, Debbie has perfected a slew of recipes that include a delicious jelly made from Giulio’s Shiraz wine and apples; a tomato sauce confected with star-anise and cinnamon; and an onion and thyme marmalade that’s a must with cheese and crackers.

Despite the surging business, they don’t wish to become slaves to their success. “We’re a family business and we’re going to stay that way,” says Debbie as her boys nod vigorously in the background. Having harvested olives throughout their childhood, the trio was delighted when their father recently acquired a battery-operated raker that picks all a tree’s olives in a record-breaking five minutes. “It used to take us one-and-a-half hours!” says 15-year-old Adam, delighted that his parents’ success frees him up to enjoy more guitar strumming. With Luca on the trumpet and Enzo on the piano, the boys like to make music while Mum whips up her sauces in the kitchen and Papa reinvigorates the crops he knows and loves so well. Here at Evilo Estate, it’s la dolce vita, fair dinkum.

Did you know

Green and black olives are grown on identical trees – both start out green. Green olives are picked at an earlier stage of their development while black olives are left on the tree longer. The difference in harvesting time is what contributes to the change in an olive’s colour and, ultimately, its texture and taste.

Photography: Andrew Lehmann. Hair & make-up: Emma Hack.