Lechín de Sevilla Olives
L’olive à huile rustique d’Andalousie, dite Zorzaleño — une huile fluide, fraîche, légèrement amère.
The Lechín de Sevilla — also known as the Zorzaleño, “the thrush’s olive,” for the birds that love it — is a hardy, widely grown Andalusian variety. Tough in poor soils and drought, it is mainly an oil olive, giving a fluid, fresh, lightly bitter oil, and it doubles as a modest table olive. Not a celebrity, but one of the dependable trees that quietly keep southern Spain in oil.
- Origin
- Andalusia (Seville/Cádiz) · Spain
- Also called
- Zorzaleño
- Type
- Oil & table
- Colour
- Green to black
- Flavour (oil)
- Fresh, fluid, lightly bitter
- Traits
- Very drought- and soil-hardy
- Best for
- Everyday oil, blending
The dependable Andalusian
The Lechín earns its place by toughness. It bears reliably on dry, marginal land where fussier varieties sulk, which is why it is so widely planted across western Andalusia. Its oil is fresh and fluid with a gentle bitterness — not the most intense, but clean and useful, and a good blending component to lift milder oils.
You will rarely see “Lechín” on the front of a bottle — it is more often a quiet workhorse inside Andalusian blends than a single-variety star. That is no slight: a great deal of honest, everyday Spanish oil leans on dependable varieties like this one.