November is harvest time at La Cazalla, including our home-grown pears, persimmons, quince and olives. It’s pretty hard work to gather the olives, as we must lay out the nets under the trees and then either ‘stroke’ them from the lower branches or use poles to strike them off the upper levels. Plenty of tea and snacks are required to keep us all going!
Once harvested, we have a maximum of four days within which to take our olives to the mill. They are weighed and poured into a grate to commence their transformation into our single-estate organic extra virgin olive oil. Leaves and twigs are removed and the olives are cleaned and filtered into oil.
Whilst at the mill we learned that our harvest this year was not the only one locally that had not produced as many olives as last year, with many estates in Spain and Italy producing only a third of their usual yield. Despite the predicted rise in the price of olive oil, we will still be giving every family/group that stays with us a free bottle of our organic extra virgin oil in their welcome basket. Our local friends tell us it’s delicious, so book your stay early to avoid missing out!
