How to Cure Kalamata Olives at Home
The Kalamata is a black olive with an attitude, and curing it at home is the surest way to taste why Greece is so proud of it. It takes patience and a splash of red-wine vinegar — here is the method.
A true Kalamata is picked dark and ripe, and like any olive it is fiercely bitter straight from the tree. The Greek way is a brine ferment finished with red-wine vinegar, which is where that characteristic winey tang comes from.
The method
Slit each olive lengthways to the stone so the brine can reach the flesh. Submerge in a 10% salt brine (100 g salt per litre), keep them weighed down and cool, and change or top up the brine over the weeks as the bitterness leaves — usually one to three months for a fully ripe black olive. When they have mellowed, move them to a finishing brine of roughly 6% salt with a generous splash of red-wine vinegar and a film of olive oil on top.
If a “Kalamata” cures in days rather than weeks, it was never a tree-ripened Kalamata — it was a green olive oxidised black and rushed. The real thing takes its time, and you can taste the difference: a proper Kalamata is rich and a little winey, never just salty. See the full story on the Kalamata variety page.
Finish with garlic, a strip of lemon, oregano and good oil. Serve with bread, feta and a glass of something rough and red.