Extra special oil secures award
When an award-winning oil turns out to be pressed from big green table olives — the kind normally destined for a jar, not a mill — it breaks a basic rule of the trade. Table varieties give very little oil. But now and then, that stubborn, low-yield gamble produces something exceptional.
Most olives lead a specialised life. Some varieties are grown for oil — small, oil-rich fruit destined for the mill. Others are grown for the table — large, fleshy olives destined for curing and a jar. The two rarely swap jobs, because pressing a table olive for oil is, on paper, a poor bet: all that flesh holds surprisingly little oil. So when an oil pressed from a big green table variety walks off with a national best-in-show award, it is worth asking what is going on.
Why table olives make so little oil
A table olive is bred for size and texture — a plump, meaty fruit that cures well and eats well. Oil content is beside the point, and it shows: a big ‘queen’-type olive may yield only a fraction of the oil a small oil-specialist like Koroneiki or Arbequina gives from the same weight of fruit. Press it for oil and you get a trickle where an oil variety gives a stream. For a commercial miller that maths is the end of the conversation.
The gamble that sometimes pays
And yet a handful of growers do it anyway, usually small single-estate producers who can afford to chase quality over quantity. The logic is that a distinctive variety, picked at the right moment and milled with obsessive care, can give a small volume of genuinely unusual, characterful oil — the sort that stands out on a competition table precisely because it does not taste like everything else. It is the opposite of the commodity mindset: less oil, but oil worth talking about. When it works, a low-yield curiosity becomes a trophy.
What it tells you about New World oil
Stories like this tend to come from the newer olive countries — Australia, California, South America — and that is no accident. Freed from centuries of ‘this variety is for oil, that one is for the table’ tradition, New World growers experiment: pressing table varieties, chasing single-estate character, entering competitions with something odd. Plenty of it fails. But this willingness to break the rulebook is exactly how the New World has, in a generation, gone from novelty to serious contender. Yield is not the same as quality, and the best small producers have proved it.
| Oil variety | Table variety pressed for oil | |
|---|---|---|
| Fruit | Small, oil-rich | Large, fleshy |
| Oil yield | High — a stream | Low — a trickle |
| Commercial logic | Efficient, scalable | Rarely worth it at scale |
| The upside | Reliable, everyday oil | Small-batch, distinctive, prize-worthy |
| Who does it | Most millers | A few quality-obsessed estates |
Practical takeaways
- Olives are usually bred for oil or the table, not both — table olives give little oil.
- Pressing a table variety for oil is a low-yield gamble, viable only in small batches.
- Done with care, it can produce unusually characterful award-winning oil.
- Yield is not quality — a trickle of great oil beats a stream of dull oil.
- The New World leads this kind of experiment, unbound by old tradition.
Table olives pressed for oil: common questions
Can you make oil from table olives?
Yes, but they yield very little of it. Table varieties are bred for flesh and texture, not oil, so pressing them is inefficient — a trickle rather than a stream.
Why would anyone do it, then?
For character. A small single-estate producer can press an unusual variety with great care and get a distinctive, prize-worthy oil that stands out precisely because it is rare.
Does low yield mean low quality?
No — the two are unrelated. A small volume of beautifully made oil from an unusual olive can beat a large volume of ordinary oil in competition.
Why do these stories come from Australia or California?
Newer olive countries are not bound by old ‘oil olive versus table olive’ tradition, so their growers experiment freely — including pressing table varieties for oil.
What is a ‘queen’ olive?
A general name for very large table olives (such as big Spanish-type green olives) prized for their size and meaty flesh — and, as it happens, low in oil.
There is a useful lesson hiding in a table olive that won an oil prize: in this business, yield and quality are two completely different things. A commercial miller wants litres per tonne and picks his variety accordingly. A small estate chasing a trophy will happily press an olive that gives almost nothing, because the little it gives is extraordinary. When you see ‘single-estate’ and an odd variety on a bottle, that is often the gamble you are paying for — and, at its best, it is well worth it.
Drawn from small-estate and New World practice of pressing table varieties for characterful, low-yield oil.