Unbelievable! Think of all the carbon this tree has soaked up over the centuries. Olive trees are a continual source of carbon sequestering because they are a shrub and not a tree. Meaning they keep growing new trunks in their natural state. In their managed state we prune branches to maximise light and airflow, but they naturally just grow more branches. They never stop sucking in carbon dioxide and putting out clean oxygen.
Gotta love olive trees 🥰
Some wild winds around today have resulted in some unwanted (but cheap) pruning at our Mt Moriac Olives grove. This is one of about 6 trees along a ridge that copped it the worst.
by Stephen Parker November 10, 2023
Welcome to our first instalment of a new weekly blog. Plenty of exciting things happening here at Geelong Region Olives and we are super keen to share with you all things Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Our weekly blog aims to give you an insight into the amazing groves we manage, the award winning oils we produce and some of the top restaurants throughout the region we are proud to supply.
What better way to kick off our first post than to share our results from the Australian International Olive Awards which were held in Canberra last week. Producers from all over the country and internationally came together to celebrate the season that was and showcase their amazing olive products.
The awards are recognised as an industry benchmark both here in Australia and globally.
Our Bundara View Koroneiki was an absolute standout claiming the most prestigious award of BEST IN SHOW. It also took out best in class, best in state, country and southern hemisphere.
Bundara View is situated within the rolling hills of the Golden Plains of Western Victoria, along the Leigh River Valley. The two main plantings being Koroneiki and Taggiasca.
Prior to the harvest this year we put a lot of effort into pruning the grove and getting the trees to an optimal size for mechanical shaking. Opening up the canopy and promoting growth proved beneficial as we had an impressive crop with above average oil yield.
Like most other producers, our harvest season was a lot later than usual and this grove was harvested in mid July, which was the optimal time for this fruit and part of the reason the oil was of outstanding quality.
We ensure the fruit comes straight from the tree to the processing plant to be pressed in no time at all.
The judges described it as having 'interesting aromas of pink grapefruit, pink lemonade, green apple peel and tropical fruits.... long flavoursome length with plenty of fruit and flavour." And we agree!
We were absolutely humbled to receive such amazing results and we will continue to strive for the very best when it comes to local, quality produce.
We learnt early on that efficiency in the harvesting process was critical for any chance of producing value for money and consistently great quality extra virgin olive oil. Doing things by hand produced mixed results so we changed our work practices and groomed our trees for mechanical harvesting.
Instead of weeks to complete the harvest, it is now usually completed within 2-3 days. We have our Extra Virgin Olive Oil back to us from the processing plant within 24 hours and begin the settling process immediately in our Stainless Steel tanks.
Our crop sizes have been as big as 30,000kg with oil yields of ~5,000+L of Extra Virgin Olive oil. Given our scale we aim to be a value provider of extra virgin olive oil and not a small scale boutique provider. At full production we are expecting around 50,000kg of fruit.
We still consider ourselves Artisans because we learn as much as we can about our trade and put all our love and skill into producing our products for you. We've never needed to buy oil or fruit from elsewhere having been a seller of fruit and oil to other growers given our size.
We aim to have healthy trees with the lightest touch possible from any chemicals. By regular pruning and shaping of the trees we have achieved this. As with any primary production enterprise nutrient is being removed from the soil by the fact of growing a crop, tree or feeding animals so we replenish the nutrients from time to time with organic compounds and soil improvers and use mulch to help sustain and encourage the biological processes.
We do knock down the weeds once or twice a year as you can see in the image here.
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