Olive Spotlight: Tonda Iblea - the olive that smells like tomato and tastes like Sicily
Jun 25, 2026
Meet the cultivar at the heart of Pegaso (and the reason our oil tastes like nothing else on earth).
Every olive variety has a personality. Some are mild and buttery. Some grassy and light. Others bitter and rigid. The Tonda Iblea is something else entirely. It smells, unmistakably, like a vine-ripe tomato. That is its most famous trait.
This isn't a metaphor. The Tonda Iblea shares the same polyphenol genus as the tomato plant, a botanical kinship that produces a genuinely remarkable aroma: fresh green tomato, wild herbs and a hint of artichoke. It grows in the Hyblaean Mountains of southeastern Sicily and essentially nowhere else. The Tonda Iblea grows under unique conditions and has come to have standards.
Where it comes from
The name says it all: Tonda (round) Iblea (from the Iblei mountains). The EU has granted it Protected Designation of Origin status under the Monti Iblei PDO, like Champagne or Parmigiano, the geography is the whole point. The village of Buccheri, at 820 meters in the Hyblaean hills, was named World Capital of Quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil in 2015, its monocultivar Tonda Iblea winning the top prize at the Sol d'Oro competition in Verona. Our orchard grows in the same soil. And we're very proud of it.
What makes it unusual
The Tonda Iblea thrives at altitude. It's one of the few olive varieties genuinely resistant to cold, which is why it flourishes in the high Hyblaean hills while most Sicilian cultivars prefer the coast. The flavor profile is harmonious: a sweet fruity opening, moderate bitterness, and a defined peppery finish (that warmth at the back of the throat that signals high polyphenols and an early harvest). The tomato-leaf aroma weaves through all of it without ever taking over. Olive oil people call this complexity. We just call it really delicious.
Its role in Pegaso
Pegaso blends three cultivars: Biancolilla brings lightness and fruit, Nocellara Messinese adds body and a grassy note and Tonda Iblea is the main character: it adds the pepper, the depth, the complexity that lingers. It also explains why Pegaso pairs so beautifully with tomatoes. Pour it over sliced tomatoes with good sea flaky salt and that's not just a side dish. That's southeastern Sicily in its most direct form.
Our family's trees have been producing Tonda Iblea since 1916. But we didn't choose this variety. The land chose it long before we arrived. The relationship between the Tonda Iblea and the Iblei mountains runs so deep that the two are essentially inseparable in the minds of anyone who knows Sicilian olive oil. Ask a producer in the region what they grow and they won't say "olives." They'll say Tonda Iblea the way a winemaker in Burgundy says Pinot Noir, as if no other answer is possible.
