OLIVE OIL | THE VALLEY OF THE WOLVES
In the family’ s elegant dining room, the antique wooden table was laid with fresh crusty country bread, cheese from Azeitao, two types of olive oil, and of course a dish of freshlybrined olives.‘ Maybe they are not quite ready” apologised Joaquim, as he poured me a glass of his cousin’ s wine from Casa Santos Lima in the Dao. The olives were this year’ s harvest – and the freshest I’ d ever tasted.“ If you want to eat them earlier you have to cut the olives to allow the salt to penetrate” he explained. Joaquim likes to eat, and talk about, olives, but he was looking restless.
The Olive Groves‘ I’ d go mad in four walls” he told me later as we walked through the groves.‘ I love the open space. Relativity is different in the countryside – time is different.’ And as I watched Joaquim, leaning against his mud-splattered Jeep, gazing contentedly across his fields, I knew what he meant.
As we strolled through the sun-dappled estate, the late winter sunshine casting long shadows, Joaquim explained to me that he grows five different varieties of olive, planted in two ways. Some groves are planted the traditional way – tall trees widely spaced. But, like Herculano himself a hundred years ago, Joaquim too is at the forefront of new developments. He has created groves of densely planted smaller trees, which allows for mechanised and costeffective harvesting.
‘ Fast picking means that you can pick at exactly the right moment, organoleptically speaking. Which is all good for the taste’.
40 | Summer 2012 | www. portugal-life. net |