Inside the 2026 olive harvest: what happens to your bottle

Inside the 2026 olive harvest: what happens to your bottle

When you pre-order a bottle of our olive oil, you are not buying something off a shelf. You are reserving a share of a harvest that has not happened yet. Here is exactly what happens between your order and the moment the box leaves our door.

October to December 2026: the harvest

In the Alentejo, the olive harvest starts when the nights turn cool, usually in the second half of October. We pick early, while most olives are still green-to-purple, because early harvesting gives the oil its peppery bite and keeps the polyphenols high. It also means lower yields — an early-harvest tree gives roughly half the oil of a fully ripe one. That trade-off is deliberate.

The olives are picked by hand and with small electric rakes onto nets laid under the trees. Branches are never beaten with sticks; it damages both the fruit and next year''s buds. Each day''s picking goes into ventilated crates, never plastic bags, because olives start to ferment within hours if they cannot breathe.

Within 24 hours: the mill

Speed matters more than almost anything else in olive oil. Our olives go to the mill the same day they are picked, always within 24 hours. At the mill they are washed, crushed into a paste, and malaxed — slowly kneaded — at temperatures kept below 27 degrees Celsius. That is what "cold extraction" actually means: no heat is added to coax more oil out, because heat would flatten the flavour.

The oil is then separated by centrifuge, never with chemical solvents. What comes out is cloudy, intensely green, and smells like cut grass and green tomato. That cloudiness is fine sediment and tiny water droplets — a sign of a fresh, unfiltered oil.

January to March 2027: settling and bottling

Fresh oil needs rest. We let it settle in stainless steel tanks through the winter, in a cool dark room, so the sediment drops naturally. We do not filter aggressively; a light natural settling keeps more character in the oil.

Before bottling, every batch is tasted and tested. We check acidity (our target is well under 0.4 percent, far below the 0.8 percent limit for extra virgin) and peroxide levels, which tell you how fresh and well-handled the oil is. Only then does the oil go into dark glass bottles, which protect it from light — the biggest enemy of olive oil in a kitchen.

April 2027: shipping

Pre-orders ship in April 2027, in the order they were placed. You will get an email when your bottles are on the way. Because you ordered early, your oil comes from the first pressing of the season — the freshest oil we will have all year.

Why we sell it this way

Most olive oil in supermarkets is a blend of harvests, sometimes years old, and the label rarely tells you when the olives were picked. Pre-ordering flips that around: you know the exact harvest, the exact region, and the exact month your oil was pressed. It also lets us plan the bottling run honestly, without guessing how much to produce.

If you would like a bottle from this harvest, you can pre-order here or join the waitlist to be notified the moment the harvest is confirmed.