Olive World Records: Oldest, Biggest, Most Expensive
Almost every olive record you will read is a claim rather than a measurement, because the one thing that would settle the big ones, a count of growth rings, is destroyed by the way an old olive tree grows. The heartwood rots out, the trunk becomes a hollow ring of living tissue, and the tree survives by splitting into what look like several separate trunks. There is nothing left to count. That is why the oldest olive tree in the world has an age range of several thousand years attached to it, and why the honest version of this list separates what is measured from what is asserted.
The records that can be checked are mostly the industrial ones. Production tonnages are reported to the International Olive Council, fruit sizes are graded by count per kilogram, and auction prices leave receipts. Those are set out below alongside the famous unverifiable ones, with a note on how solid each is.
The oldest trees
The best known contender is the Olive Tree of Vouves, on Crete near Kolymvari. Its trunk measures about 12.5 metres in circumference and roughly 4.6 metres across, it is entirely hollow, and it still fruits. Estimates from the University of Crete put it at around 4,000 years old, while other assessments based on the rate at which the surrounding soil has built up suggest closer to 2,000. Both figures are printed on signage and in guidebooks, which is a fair illustration of the problem.
Three other trees are regularly presented as older. Al Badawi, at Al-Walaja near Bethlehem, carries claims of 3,000 to 5,500 years. The Sisters of Noah at Bchaaleh in northern Lebanon are said locally to be 6,000 years old, which would make them older than the earliest chemical evidence for olive oil production. S’Ozzastru, at Luras in Sardinia, is credited with 3,000 to 4,000 years and has a girth of nearly 12 metres. None has been dated by a method that would satisfy a dendrochronologist, because none has an intact core to sample.
What can be said with confidence is that olives are among the longest lived fruit trees in cultivation, that a 1,000 year old tree is genuinely common across the Mediterranean rather than remarkable, and that a hollow trunk is a sign of great age rather than ill health. The survey of the contenders is in the biggest and oldest olive trees on earth.
The records, and how much to trust them
| Record | Holder | Figure | How solid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oldest tree | Vouves, Crete | 2,000 to 4,000 years | Contested, cannot be ring dated |
| Largest girth | Vouves, Crete | About 12.5 m circumference | Measured, but a hollow multi-stem trunk |
| Largest table olive | Gordal, Seville | 60 to 70 fruit per kg, so 14 to 16 g each | Solid, it is a trade grading |
| Biggest oil producer | Spain | Typically 1.2 to 1.5 million tonnes a year | Solid, reported annually |
| Densest olive landscape | Jaén province, Spain | About 66 million trees | Solid, from the regional cadastre |
| Oldest oil residue | Ein Zippori, Israel | About 8,000 years | Solid, chemical residue on pottery |
| Largest pile of oil jars | Monte Testaccio, Rome | Around 53 million amphorae, 35 m high | Solid, excavated and counted by sampling |
The biggest olive you can actually buy
Size in the olive trade is not measured in millimetres but in count per kilogram, which runs backwards: the smaller the number, the bigger the fruit. The International Olive Council scale runs from 60/70 at the top end down to 401/420 for the smallest. A 60/70 olive weighs about 15 grams, which is roughly the size of a small plum.
The variety that occupies the top of the scale is the Gordal from Seville, whose name simply means “the fat one”. It is also sold as Sevillano and, in Spanish markets, sometimes as the donkey olive. It is a poor oil olive, with an oil content around 15 per cent against 25 per cent or more for a proper oil variety, and it is grown almost entirely for the jar. The trade names attached to the largest grades sound like a competition in themselves: Super Colossal, Colossal, Jumbo, Mammoth, Giant. Its profile is in the Gordal in focus, and the grading scale itself is explained in olive sizes.
Claims of individual record breaking fruit do circulate, usually from Spanish and French local press at harvest time, and they are essentially never independently weighed. A genuinely exceptional Gordal might reach 20 grams. Anything reported much beyond that should be treated as a good story.
Money, scale and the records that are real
The commercial records are the ones with paperwork behind them, and several of them are more startling than the botanical claims.
- Spain produces roughly 40 to 45 per cent of the world’s olive oil in an ordinary year, out of a global total of about 3 million tonnes. Andalusia alone usually out-produces Italy, Greece and Tunisia combined.
- Jaén province is the most olive dominated landscape on earth, with around 66 million trees across roughly 550,000 hectares, and a local economy almost entirely tied to one crop.
- Table olives are a separate, comparably large industry, at roughly 3 million tonnes a year, with Egypt, Spain and Turkey at the top rather than the oil producing order you might expect.
- The most expensive bottles run into thousands. Auction and charity lots have passed 10,000 dollars, and a handful of producers sell at several hundred euros a bottle, usually on the strength of packaging and rarity rather than blind tasting scores. The equivalent story for the fruit is in the most expensive olives in the world.
- Monte Testaccio in Rome is a hill made of rubbish, about 35 metres high and covering roughly 20,000 square metres, built from an estimated 53 million broken amphorae that had carried olive oil from Spain and North Africa. It is the single largest physical trace of the ancient oil trade.
Records that get repeated and should not be
A few claims travel widely and do not hold up.
- “The olive is the oldest cultivated tree.” Olive domestication runs to roughly 6,000 years ago in the Levant, which is very old but not clearly older than the fig, the date palm or the grape.
- “This tree is 6,000 years old and still fruiting.” No olive has been dated that far by any repeatable method. The figure is local tradition, which is interesting in itself but is not a measurement.
- “Olive wood is the hardest wood in the world.” It is dense and hard, at roughly 1,100 kilograms per cubic metre when dry, which is why it sinks in water, but several tropical hardwoods are considerably harder.
- “Olive trees live forever.” They regenerate from the base rather than living indefinitely as a single stem, so an ancient tree is often better described as a very old root system carrying much younger wood.
- “The world’s largest olive grove is in country X.” Groves are rarely delimited in a way that makes this measurable. Provinces and regions can be compared, individual estates generally cannot.
Frequently asked questions
What is the oldest olive tree in the world?
The Olive Tree of Vouves on Crete is the most widely recognised claimant, with estimates ranging from about 2,000 to about 4,000 years. Trees at Al-Walaja in Palestine, Bchaaleh in Lebanon and Luras in Sardinia carry older claims, up to 6,000 years. None can be confirmed, because an ancient olive loses its heartwood and with it the growth rings that dating would require.
What is the biggest variety of olive?
The Gordal from Seville, also sold as Sevillano, is the largest widely traded table olive. At the top grades it runs 60 to 70 fruit per kilogram, so about 14 to 16 grams each. It is grown for the jar rather than the mill, since its oil content of around 15 per cent is low by olive standards.
Which country produces the most olive oil?
Spain, by a wide margin, at roughly 1.2 to 1.5 million tonnes in a normal season and about 40 to 45 per cent of world output. Italy, Greece, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, Portugal and Syria follow, with the order shifting from year to year because olive trees alternate heavy and light crops and drought hits some producers harder than others.
How much does the most expensive olive oil cost?
Ordinary premium extra virgin sits between 15 and 40 euros a litre. A small number of producers sell single estate bottles at 100 to 500 euros. Charity and novelty lots have reached five figures for a single bottle. Above the premium level, price reflects packaging, scarcity and marketing rather than anything a tasting panel would score.
How big can an olive tree get?
Most cultivated olive trees are kept between 4 and 8 metres for picking, and untended trees reach 10 to 15 metres. Girth is where the extremes appear: a very old trunk can exceed 12 metres in circumference, but it is usually hollow and made of several fused or split stems rather than one solid mass, which is why height and girth tell you almost nothing about each other in this species.