When you think of olives, imagine a small bowl at a bar or order a small bowl to match your meal at a restaurant. They are also favorites among buffets, but what do you really know …
When you think of olives, imagine a small bowl at a bar or order a small bowl to match your meal at a restaurant. They are also favorites among buffets, but do you know where they come from?
Olives are grown in olive trees; These are evergreen trees or shrubs that originate mainly in the Mediterranean, but are also grown in rich and Asia. They are quite short and feathery and rarely exceed 8 to 15 meters high, which is quite short and the trunk is usually crooked. They can live many years because they are resistant to drafts and rarely get sick. They are also fireproof. One of the oldest olive trees in the world is located in Bar, Montenegro and is said to be over 2000 years old. In 1975, a bus drove through a tree and took it west of Athens. This tree was called Plato’s Olive and was believed to be 2,400 years old. However, it is still an important historical piece at the Agricultural University of Athens today.
Did you know that a few years ago there were almost 18 million tonnes worldwide, and this number is likely to increase, and Spain is almost 6.5 million? The most important olive-growing country in the world with two and a half million hectares of land used exclusively for olive growing. Mediterranean countries are responsible for 95% of the world’s olives, and only Spain has a history of olive cultivation dating back at least 2000 years.
There is a history of the Romans importing billions of liters of Spanish olives and oil into Italy. This continues to this day, as Spain is the main source of products.
All the olives and oils differ in their taste depending on where they are made in Spain, depending on the weather conditions, the soil where the plant grows and the heat, etc. They all have different names and are called olives and different oils and only sold one. A single variety of olive is grown in one area. The main olives grown and sold today are Empeltre, Hojiblanca, Lechin, Picual, Cornicabra, Verdial, Arbequina, Picudo and varieties. There are also black and green olives. Olives are harvested in the green stage, but they can also ripen, creating a more intense and intense color known as black olives. However, some olives have an artificial color, usually the olives you buy in a can at the grocery store.
The production of Spanish olives is controlled in Spain like any other food production. They are only interested in the highest quality of olives and oils and maintain their reputation for having a good level of products, no less than the best. This is the reason why almost a quarter of the world’s olives come from psychological articles in Spain because their product is of high quality that the rest of the world prefers.