Tasting Notes

Season 2022 & Tasting Notes:

With 6 cultivars of the olive tree (Olea Europaea) now well established we have a great opportunity to harvest over an extended period. This enables us to optimize the harvest time of each cultivar so as to maximize the quality and taste of our Extra Virgin Olive Oil. 

Season 2022 - which for us commenced in July 2021 & finished after harvest in June 2022 (just like a financial year) resulted in the production of just over 22 ton of olives. It was a challenging year, but although still in the grip of the COVID epidemic we were fortunate enough to escape its ravages. We commenced the year by pruning around 600 trees and as there was good Spring rainfall we decided not to irrigate over summer. Bud burst was on time in late November but we lost a lot of blossom due to high winds at that critical time. The remaining crop fared well and ended up being larger that originally estimated. Light rains in Autumn allowed us to take full advantage of of our healthy well structured soil to spread the bio-dynamic soil activator. Harvesting commenced in late April & finished early June without any major tree-shaker breakdowns! Processing continued throughout May & June with modest yields from all cultivars.  Although the yield of EVOO was down the quality was again excellent across all cultivars.

The Italian Frantoio variety & the Spanish Picual variety were the stand-out cultivars. Over 200L of each was reserved for individual bottling.  An estate blend was then crafted from the balance of extra virgin olive oil from all cultivars.

Frantoio:
Aroma of green apple with fresh grassy & light herbal notes. The flavour is fruity with guava & feijoa highlights. It has a very light bitterness & finishes with a strong, intense, throat catching pungency. This is a great dipping oil with crusty bread.

Picual:
Fresh grassy aroma with green tomato & green tea. These are expressed in the flavour together with hints of banana & mint. A medium bitterness finishes with a light but throat catching pungency. An excellent dressing oil – for green, tomato or potato salads or on roasted vegetables, especially potato.

Estate Blend:
Fresh grassy aroma with green tomato and green banana highlights. The flavour is more nutty with hints of almond, banana and fruit salad. A light bitterness with a mild throat catching pungency that has a slight peppery finish. An excellent general purpose extra virgin olive oil.