The extraction of piceatannol from the sim fruit (Rhodomyrtus tomentosa) was optimised. Firstly, the piceatannol content was determined in the different parts of the fruit (skin, pulp, and seed) and indicated that 94.20% of the piceatannol content was associated to the seeds, which were chosen as starting material to optimise the piceatannol extraction. A second-order polynomial model with three important variables (ethanol concentration, temperature and extraction time) was used. A rotatable central composite design consisting of 21 experimental runs with three replicates at the centre point was applied to describe the experimental data, i.e. the sim seed apparent piceatannol content. The experimental results fitted well to the model (R2 = 0.9647). The optimised conditions were 78.8% ethanol, 85.3 °C and an extraction time of 78.8 min. Four extractions were performed in parallel at the optimal conditions to validate the model. The experimental value agreed with the predicted value (p < 0.05). © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.