In these days this year’s olive harvest and processing in our olive oil mill is over. For the past eight weeks we have been in the field almost around the clock, harvesting, processing, tasting and hanging out in our oil mill. Although this year was bad for olive growers, there was no lack of good cheer and plans for next year.

WEATHER (CONDITIONS)

Harvesting and processing are always a special moment for us. Everything we have done and invested during the year has borne fruit – and we are satisfied. As for the olive year, this one was harder and more challenging than the last few. The snow in April delayed the flowering of the olives for May, reducing the possibility of fruit development, and since June was hot, the flowers were burned and the olives were not fertilized. For this reason, the amount of oil this year is slightly lower than last year, although this depends on the location of the olive groves and varieties, so not all colleagues had the same problems.

PROCESSING AND OIL PRODUCTION

Throughout the year we have worked on improving technology and procedures to guarantee the quality of extra virgin olive oil production. This is the second successful season in our new olive oil mill and we are proud of how everything is working. When we started building the olive oil mill, our main motivator was to be involved in every step of processing olives into olive oil so that we could stand behind our product and fully guarantee the quality – and we have succeeded. Also, this year we had new machinery for the harvest itself, which made the whole process much easier. For this reason, and the fact that we pay great attention to the organic production, storage and bottling of oil, this season’s extra virgin olive oil is of really high quality, and you have to convince yourself of the taste and smell.

FRESH OIL

After the first week of harvest, we started selling Mlado – fresh extra virgin olive oil, which comes from olives harvested in the first three days of this year’s harvest. We will start bottling new varieties and putting them on the market in a few days. Due to the increase in excise taxes and high prices of raw materials worldwide, with new blends we are forced to increase the price of olive oil for the first time in 15 years to maintain the quality of our product. This is our top priority and there is no compromise.