“I had come back from England and was working for a lady who had olive trees on her farm.  She sent me to the Olives New Zealand conference.  Teresa joined me at the meal on the Saturday night and we haven’t stopped since then,” Don told Rural Living.  “We could see the passion.”

“By the time I got there, Don was already decided.” Teresa said with a laugh.

“I was already keen to look after the trees on the farm where I was working.  So we looked for a block.  But we had a bit of a help in the beginning in that some people with a farm further north asked us to look after the farm and in return we could have the crop.”

The grove in question had twenty year old trees which was a rarity in New Zealand. “They were nice mature trees with great oil and in our first year of production we got two gold medals.”

Don and Teresa still manage the grove giving a percentage back to the owners in the form of olive oil for their family.

There is more than a touch of Tuscany to the rural property with no boundary fences to be seen and a magnificent pagoda propping up a series of well established grapevines, under which Don has built a  solid five-meter outdoor dining table.

“We can have the entire family for Christmas and sit under the vines,” Teresa said.

Apart from a few chickens and some transitory ducks, they run no animals on the property  but you don’t need to see the more than 800 olive trees on the block to realise Don and Teresa’s passion is olive oil. 

In less than seven years the couple have established themselves as leading boutique growers and producers.  Every weekend they are present at Farmers Markets from Northland to Hamilton, introducing people to the taste of high quality oil. “People buy it for a different reason,” Teresa explained. “They buy supermarket olive oil for cooking but good quality oil for the flavour and the health benefits.”

Convincing people to try the oils and taste the difference has been part of the challenge with some markets proving easier to conquer than others. 

“You know older people, older than us, who grew up with a spoonful of castor oil each day, are hesitant to try anything with oil,” Don laughed. “But we’ve been doing farmers markets for nearly seven years and every  Saturday, every Sunday around three or four hundred people are tasting our oil.”

So, how do you make olive oil?  Traditionally the olives are knocked off the tree on to mats on the ground, and Don and Teresa had no intention of breaking with tradition.  Ripeness is judged by feel – and the olives are left as long as possible for maximum flavour. “But not too long.  Left too long  the olive oil  level drops,” Don said.

A peaceful, easy feelin': Don and Teresa have a passion olives.

Mats, ten metres long and six metres wide, are placed on the ground under the trees and pneumatic rakes, driven by compressed air, reaching two metres above head level knock the olives down.  Around six trees can be processed at a time.   The olives are then taken to Wellsford for processing.  Don somewhat wistfully added they are planning to set up their own press eventually – but it is still a few years away.

“We’re a start up business and we can’t do it all at once.”

The olives are put through a crusher which  crushes everything including the  pit into a paste.  From there the paste is put into a centrifuge which spins the paste to the outside leaving clear green oil. 

“Teresa’s grandfather made olive oil in the far north in the 1920’s. He would put the olives in a sack, let them ferment a little bit and then put them in a tin bath,” Don said.  “Then he put a plank on them and the whole family sat on the plank to press everything out into the bath.  You can get your olives still pressed through big mats and water and oil crushed out which is essentially the same process.”

The oil is then brought back to Echo Valley and stored under  nitrogen to keep it from oxidizing.  “We bottle what we need for the markets as we need it.”

The fact that no heat or chemicals are used in the pressing process accounts for the label ‘Cold Pressed Olive Oil’.

The small buds will eventually produce the olives that make their award winning olive oil.

“The best quality oil is the run of oil that comes off the first squeezing and first paste,” Teresa told us. “Nobody in New Zealand does second press that we know of.” 

Olive trees take around seven years to mature and are usually pollinated by the wind – although some varities do require a pollinator.  Don and Teresa have found that having a percentage of pollinator trees helps the crop.  “It can be biannual though.  You can get a really heavy crop one year and a lighter one the next.”

Olives need to be pickled in brine for eating and Don is fascinated by this. “Who figured out they need to be pickled to eat?  Did they fall in the sea and someone tried them?  Who figured out that if you crushed them you would get this wonderful oil.  They are really nature’s gift.”

Walking through the grove on an early spring evening it is easy to see why Don and Teresa love their lifestyle.  There is a peaceful calm over the grove as the sun sets and it is easy to forget that less than two hours drive south will bring you to Auckland city.

You could just as easily be sitting in a quiet corner of Tuscany.  Or Eden.