Dr. Brandi · Cesira
Where ancient groves
meet the art
of living well
Integrative nutritionist. Certified olive oil sommelier. Author. Retreat host. And for the past several years, a quiet ambassador for the Tuscan way of eating, living, and paying attention.
Certified Olive Oil Sommelier
Integrative & Functional Nutritionist
Author — If Trees Could Talk (Nov 2026)
Retreat Host — Chianti Grove, Tuscany
Mediterranean Lifestyle Specialist
There are trees in Tuscany older than the English language. I have stood beneath them, oil on my hands, and understood — in the way you understand things only through the body — why this fruit, this land, and this ancient practice have outlasted everything else.
— Dr. Brandi
The story
How a tree
changed
everything
I did not set out to become an olive oil sommelier. I set out to understand why the people of the Mediterranean seemed to carry a kind of ease in their bodies — a relationship with food that was ancient and unhurried and entirely at odds with everything I had been taught about nutrition.
The olive tree was the answer I kept arriving at. Not olive oil as a supplement or a trend or a category on a grocery shelf — but the tree itself: its patience, its age, the way it returns year after year without asking to be noticed.
I trained as an integrative and functional nutritionist because I believed that the body and the food system are inseparable. I became a certified olive oil sommelier because I needed the language to talk about what I had been tasting for years without being able to name. And I spent three years writing a book because some knowledge refuses to stay inside a certification.
Cesira is the meeting point of all of it. The oil we source. The retreats I lead. The courses I teach. The book that started as field notes and became something closer to a love letter to Tuscany and the people who tend it.
I am Dr. Brandi. And the trees have been very patient with me.
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
What Dr. Brandi brings to the table
I
Olive Oil Mastery
Certified by the Olive Oil Sommelier Professionals at ESAO. Trained to evaluate color, aroma, taste, and quality across single-estate and blended oils from across the Mediterranean.
III
Immersive Education
Tastings, workshops, and retreats designed for people who want to understand their food at the level of soil and tree and press — not supermarket shelf and supplement stack.
II
Integrative Nutrition
An approach to health that treats food as relationship, not a transaction - rooted in the Mediterranean model of eating and the functional science of what olive polyphenols actually do inside the body.
IV
Tuscan Heritage
Years of building relationships with Chianti producers, farmers, and families — the kind of access that only comes from returning to the same groves, season after season, and learning to listen.
Three Ways In
THE BOOK
THE RETREAT
Chianti Grove
October 2026
Two days on a private Tuscan estate. Ancient groves, a press, long table dinners. six guests. No more.
THE SHOP
Early Harvest
Olive Oil
Grove-direct extra virgin olive oil from Tuscany, cold-pressed in small batches at peak freshness and shipped to your door.
If Trees Could Talk
The history of the olive tree, its oil, and the Tuscan families who never let either be forgotten. Out November 11th, 2026.
PROFESSIONAL TASTINGS
Bring Dr. Brandi
to your table
I offer private and group olive oil tastings for those who want to understand what they are pouring — and why it matters. Whether for a dinner party, a corporate event, or a culinary gathering, the experience is built around one idea: that paying attention to what you eat changes how you live.
How to identify quality olive oil by sight, aroma, and taste
How to detect defects — and why most people can't
The harvest date, the variety, and what they tell you
How to pair and cook with great olive oil
A guided flight of estate-selected oils from Tuscany
FREE GUIDE
The Art of Tasting:
A Field Guide to Olive Oil
Three years of research. A lifetime of Tuscan harvests. Distilled into a beautifully written guide to tasting olive oil the way a sommelier does — free, for the people willing to pay attention.