The extra virgin olive oil from Ed and Liz Scott's Moutere Grove olive grove recently won silver at the annual Olive Business Awards 2001 in Melbourne Australia. The awards win at the three day conference and seminar, was made even more memorable as it was the first year the awards were open to New Zealand oil producers, and in winning their entered class, they received the highest score in all classes.
"Which means we were beating fresh oils which really shouldn't happen," Ed Scott explained, "because oil doesn't get better in the bottle, it starts a slow gradual deterioration in the bottle - the better the oil the slower the deterioration, so it's pretty gratifying."
The classes of extra virgin olive oil judged were commercial soft and sweet season 2000, fresh early season 2001 and organic, with Moutere Grove winning the commercial bitter and pungent 2000 class. Another local and organic producer Andrew and Hilary Fenemor of Mt Heslington Olives near Brightwater also won an award in the same class.
Ed began planting his Central Road, Upper Moutere grove with 1,850 Tuscany variety trees of Pendolino and Leccino. The following year further planting plans were set back by nursery stock infected with olive knot requiring the removal of 300 trees and the ground left fallow for a year, but the second planting of 2,100 Frantoio and Pendilino is now 2 ½ years old. There are also 100 Moraiolo variety to get the blend they wanted.
"There are a lot of analogies with the wine industry but it's not the same, and a good oil really needs a complexity of flavour, and skillful blending can do that," Ed says.
Moutere Grove researched where some of the best oils in the world were coming from and noticed that consistently Tuscany was there, and they felt that the climate here has more in common with Italy than it does with Israel. "Not to say it is the same by any means, nor are the soils but they do grow on clay soils in Tuscany as well. And the Leccino are a bit more frost resistant and this is a bit of a frost hole down here."
1,500 trees gave them 800 litres of oil last year. This year the harvest is down on quantity because of frost damaged fruit that required careful hand picking. The scale of the grove means they will head towards mechanically assisted harvesting, looking at vibrating combs that Ed said seemed to work well. The pressed oil is presently stored in tanks under nitrogen on the property, settling before bottling in his recently licensed food premises.
"Marketing is absolutely everything, something we didn't appreciate when we started. We began thinking lets see if we can grow these things then suddenly you find you have a crop and what are we going to do with it." Ed admitted.
At present mainly marketed in New Zealand, he foresees a time in full production when probably only 10% will go to the New Zealand market with the rest going overseas. "And really the rest of the world is the market, we've got a lot of exploration to do, and a lot hard work to do."
