Artisan Story: Ursini — The Craft of Oil and Sauces

Where Abruzzo’s Landscape Finds Its Voice

Between Mountain and Sea

If you drive the winding road between the Maiella mountains and the Adriatic coast, you pass through a belt of olive trees so old they look like sculpture.
Their trunks twist in the wind, their roots clutch the red soil of Guardiagrele, and their leaves shimmer silver against the light.
This is the home of Ursini, a family of olive growers who turned the landscape of Abruzzo into a kitchen — not an empire, but a craft.

To outsiders, Ursini might look like a company that makes oils, sauces and olives.
But to those who’ve stood in their workshop and smelled the first press of Gentile di Chieti olives or the roasting of peppers from Altino, it’s clear that what they really produce is flavour translated into form.

Roots in the Olive

For the Ursini family, everything began with the olive tree.
Long before jars and labels, there was only the frantoio — the oil mill — and the rhythm of the harvest.
Families in the Chieti hills would bring baskets of their own olives to be pressed, and the Ursini millers were known for precision: cool temperatures, quick pressing, clean extraction.

The varieties were all local — Gentile di Chieti, Leccino, Intosso, Dritta — and the oil that came from them was strong yet elegant, with scents of artichoke, almond and cut grass.
This oil wasn’t made to be shown off; it was made to cook with, to dip bread into, to light the winter kitchen.

When Luigi Ursini, the founder, took over the mill in the 1990s, he carried that same respect for oil but added something new: curiosity.
He began to ask what would happen if the olive oil wasn’t the end of the recipe, but the beginning.

From Oil to Kitchen

That question changed everything.
Luigi started experimenting with what he called condimenti d’autore — condiments crafted like dishes.
He blended roasted vegetables, herbs, and olives with his freshly pressed oil, not to mask the oil’s flavour, but to express it differently.

The result was not industrial paste, but a new category of Italian pantry: small-batch, kitchen-crafted sauces that spoke of territory.
He built a kitchen inside the mill, hired cooks instead of technicians, and treated each jar as a living recipe.
From this came creme di carciofi, pesti di rucola, sughi al pomodoro pera d’Abruzzo, and creme allo zafferano dell’Aquila — not inventions, but evolutions of old household preserves.

The olive oil was still the heart, but now it had a chorus.

A Kitchen, Not a Factory

Step into the Ursini production house today and you hear knives, not machinery.
Vegetables are roasted, grilled, blanched or left raw depending on their nature.
Garlic is poached slowly in oil to tame its heat; basil is pulsed briefly so it stays green.
No starches, no preservatives, no shortcuts.

Everything happens in rhythm with the seasons.
When the peperone dolce di Altino ripens in August, the air fills with its perfume.
When artichokes arrive in spring, the workshop smells like a market morning.
Tomatoes come from the coastal plain near Francavilla al Mare — thick-skinned, sun-burnt, low in acidity.

Each batch is adjusted by taste, not formula.
If the peppers are sweeter, less salt is used; if the artichokes are tender, less lemon.
It’s not standardisation — it’s conversation.

The Catalogue of Ideas

Ursini’s catalogue feels like a map of Abruzzo in jars:

• Olive Oils: single-variety extra virgins like Gentile di Chieti (elegant and soft) or Intosso (bold, spicy), and blended oils like Opera Mastra, balanced with winemaker precision.

• Olives: whole or pitted Leccino, Intosso and Bella di Cerignola olives, cured in brine or oil, firm to the bite, rich in natural bitterness.

• Sauces and Condiments: over sixty types, from classic Sugo al Pomodoro to inventive Crema di Zucchine e Mandorle or Salsa al Tartufo Nero di Roccascalegna.

• Pesti and Vegetable Creams: spreads of roasted pepper, aubergine, courgette, or rocket, all emulsified with Ursini oil.

• Gourmet Jars: Crema allo Zafferano dell’Aquila, Salsa di Funghi Porcini, Crema di Carciofi e Mandorle — refined, small-batch expressions of regional identity.

Each line speaks the same dialect: pure ingredients, unhurried time, respect for craft.

Anchored in Territory

Everything Ursini does remains geographically coherent.
Their ingredients come from within Abruzzo’s triangle of Guardiagrele–Lanciano–San Vito Chietino, a zone where the Adriatic meets the foothills.
The climate gives vegetables sweetness and concentration; the proximity allows processing within hours of harvest.

This proximity is what preserves freshness without chemicals.
It also means that every jar captures a trace of micro-climate — a reminder that food is landscape made edible.

Ursini works with around sixty small growers, each specialising in one or two crops.
Some families have cultivated the same peppers or artichokes for decades.
By paying fair prices and guaranteeing annual purchases, Ursini keeps traditional varieties viable — a quiet act of agricultural conservation disguised as business.

The Role of Olive Oil in Preservation

Italy has preserved food in oil for millennia.
Roman amphorae filled with olives and vegetables have been found along Abruzzo’s coast.
Ursini continues that lineage, but with modern precision.

Oil acts as barrier and medium: it isolates vegetables from air, sealing freshness, while simultaneously carrying and amplifying their flavour.
In Ursini’s recipes, each sauce begins with the choice of oil — mild Gentile for subtle sauces, peppery Dritta for bold ones, rounded Leccino for vegetables.

Unlike many industrial brands, they don’t add oil at the end for gloss; they start with it, cook in it, and build the emulsion from within.
That’s why an Ursini sauce coats pasta naturally, without separating or greasiness.

It’s not design; it’s chemistry born from craft.

From the Jar to the Table

There’s a rare honesty in how Ursini’s sauces behave once opened.
They don’t pretend to be homemade; they simply act as an extension of a good kitchen.

A few examples:

• Sugo al Pomodoro Pera d’Abruzzo — silky, balanced, with a natural sweetness that clings to pasta alla chitarra.
• Crema di Peperone Dolce e Ricotta — sweet and smoky, ideal with laganelle or bruschetta.
• Pesto di Rucola — peppery and creamy at once, a green echo of Abruzzo’s mountain herbs.
• Crema di Carciofi e Mandorle — rich but delicate, perfect on warm focaccia or stirred through orzo.
• Salsa al Tartufo Nero di Roccascalegna — earthy, aromatic, an edible postcard of Abruzzo’s forests.

Each one feels connected — a continuation of what the land wanted to say.

Innovation Without Betrayal

Ursini’s greatest achievement may be balance: staying rooted while modern.
They use stainless steel precision and food-science rigour, but only to protect the handmade nature of flavour.

They’ve introduced nitrogen-sealed jars to eliminate oxygen, temperature-controlled storage to preserve chlorophyll, and traceability systems that map every batch back to field and harvest.
Yet the guiding principle remains the same one you’d find in an Abruzzese grandmother’s kitchen: cook with respect, season with honesty, stop when it tastes right.

Innovation serves memory, not ego.

Fun Facts & Curiosities

Ursini produces more than 60 sauces and creams, all made in small batches.

Each recipe begins with a specific olive oil varietal chosen to match the vegetable.

The company’s first external collaboration was with a local painter, who designed labels inspired by Abruzzo’s seasonal colours.

Every year in October, during the new oil pressing, staff and local farmers hold a “taste council” to decide the year’s blends.

The Crema di Carciofi e Mandorle remains their best-selling product worldwide.

Their R&D kitchen employs chefs, not chemists — the test for a finished sauce is always “Would you eat this at home?”

Reflection — Craft as Conversation

There’s a humility to Ursini’s success that mirrors Abruzzo itself.
The region is often described as forte e gentile — strong and kind — and that’s exactly what you find in their jars: strength of flavour, gentleness of hand.

To call them a sauce producer would miss the point.
Ursini is a translator — turning harvests into language, ingredients into dialogue.
Olive oil, tomatoes, peppers, artichokes, saffron, truffle — each speaks with its own accent, but together they form a single story: of land, patience and balance.

Their work reminds us that Abruzzo’s cuisine has never been about showmanship.
It’s about proportion.
Enough salt, enough time, enough care.

Open an Ursini jar and you taste that balance — the sun, the soil, and the quiet conviction that flavour, when treated kindly, can outlive fashion.