Skyler Mapes is obsessed with her trees. A Bay Area native, she and her third- generation Calabrian husband, Giuseppe Morisani, own 20 acres of olive trees in La Castella, Italy—and they tend to them like they’re their children. “Can you imagine what a 500-year-old olive tree would have to say if it could talk? It would have so many things to say. I would listen to that podcast,” Mapes tells me through her big, toothy grin beaming across our Zoom screens.
For EXAU, the trees are just where their business starts. Mapes and Morisani oversee everything from the tending of those trees to the pressing of the olives to the bottling of oil and final distribution of their product. In short, they’re involved in every aspect possible.