From production to consumption
Certified cultivation2
Our olive tree cultivation is certified. We apply an Integrated Management System, in accordance with the European standard AGRO 2.1-2.2 (read more on Agrocert), meaning that our oleaginous fruit is free of pesticide and fertilizer residues. We adopt environmentally friendly practices, and we seek to fertilize our olive trees naturally, either with green manures, or with manure, and obviously we never use fertilizer nitrates. We manage to have green manures by sowing leguminous plants (broad beans, vetch) or cereals (oat, barley) every year, which we grind at ull-blossom, and then bury into the soil to rot and become organic manuring rich in nitrogen. It is for the same reason that we do not burn the trimmed branches, but with special equipment, we mash them and bury them as well, so that they also become organic manuring in the olive grove.
Period and method of harvest
We start harvesting towards the end of October till the end of January. The harvesting period is long, and we are patient enough to collect each time only the appropriately ripe and mature fruit from the trees, so as to get the maximum of aromas and valuable qualities for our olive oil. Furthermore, in order to have healthy olive trees, we do not collect oleaginous fruit on days of high humidity in the grove, nor when trees are wet from the rain; the humidity infiltrating the trees would “hurt” them, thus causing “carcinomas”.
The collected oleaginous fruit is placed in well-ventilated, plastic trays, which are shielded against rain, water or any kind of humidity. At the end of each day, we take oleaginous fruit collected to the oil mill and we produce our olive oil on the same day and solely from our fruit, which we then store immediately in our facilities. We follow this procedure, because if oleaginous fruit is wet or remains stored for several days, it starts to rot, and as a result, the produced olive oil will have increased acidity, and it will not be presented with the quality profile, which is mandatory, of an extra virgin olive oil.
Click here to download the Certificate AGRO 2.1-2.2
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