The dearest table olives on the market run to well over one hundred pounds a kilo, and in almost every case the price is buying labour and scarcity rather than a better-tasting olive. Some of that premium is honestly earned: hand-picking on terraces a machine cannot reach, a cultivar that yields badly, a cure that takes fourteen months. Some of…
Read the story →Indoor olive tree care comes down to strong light, a cool winter rest and careful watering. How to keep one thriving inside, and why…
September 22, 2026A true Kalamata is a specific Greek cultivar, almond-shaped, deep purple-black, split by hand or knife and cured in brine, often finished with red wine vinegar. It carries a Protected…
September 15, 2026Most olive allergies are to the pollen, not the fruit or oil. Symptoms of all 3, whether you can still eat olives, and which tests to ask a doctor about.
September 11, 2026Straight off the tree, an olive is inedible — bitter enough to make you wince. Curing is how we fix that, and you can do it at home…
Kalamata are ripened and brine-cured. Tinned black olives are picked green and oxidised. Why one tastes of wine and the other of almost nothing.
An olive that is delicious from the jar can wreck a dish, because heat does three things to it: it drives out salt, it softens the flesh, and…
In a village in Crete stands an olive tree up to 4,000 years old — still making olives. A timeline of everything it has outlived, and the one…
Australia's small olive growers do not survive by selling oil cheaply. They survive by selling everything else too — and…
Whole groves stripped overnight, not an olive left on the ground. Grove theft sounds like a curiosity until you look…
Ten kinds of olive in the pantry is not a collection, it is a filing problem. Here is how to…
Olive oil went from a British chemist's shelf to a British kitchen staple in about two generations. How that happened…
Picking day is the single biggest decision in an olive year. Colour charts, maturity indices and lab instruments all try…
Pourquoi les bocaux d'olives sont rappelés, ce que signifient réellement les classes de rappel, et la seule règle qui compte…
Its beauty, its origins, its history: the varieties, the fields, the pictures.
“What does lavender have to do with olives? Well, I’m glad you asked. I just love both, and to me they’re the perfect match.”
