Do you know which olives are best for oil and which ones are good to eat?

There are over 2,000 varieties of olive species globally, around 150 are grown for food and oil production. Olives are grown all around the world from Spain to Italy, right across Africa, in the United States and in Australia and New Zealand.

Spain is the world’s biggest producer of olive oil, followed by Morocco, Turkey, Greece and Italy.

Australia first started producing olives and olive oil in the 1800s, with the first trees planted near Parramatta in New South Wales.

Olives need a relatively dry climate and friable, well-drained soil which is why they thrive in Australia. The one thing olives can’t handle is excessively cold temperatures which is why they love it up here in the Northern Rivers of NSW!

Check out our short guide to the olives we love.

Kalamata

Named after a city in the Southern Pelopponese in Greece, Kalamatas are big meaty olives with dark purple flesh and skin. Kalamatas are picked ripe by hand to avoid bruising and are used as table olives. We preserve ours in a brine made with red wine and balsamic vinegar vinegar. They are perfect eaten straight from the pack or used to make tapenade.

We use them for: Wood-smoked, semi-dried and table olives.

Manzanillo

Harking from the Seville region in Spain, the Manzanillo is the most widely grown olive in the world because of its sensational pit-to-flesh ratio. Australia has over eleven million trees covering 35,000 hectares (86,000 acres) in cultivation. This ‘dual purpose’ olive - meaning it can be used for both oil and as a table olive - is very well-suited to the climate. Because of their generous size, you often see this variety stuffed with cheese, almonds or pimentos and they are your classic martini olive.

We use them for: Wood-smoked and table olives.

Hardy’s Mammoths

This is a very special cultivar as it originated in Australia. Thomas Hardy (of Hardy’s wine business fame), was an Englishman who settled in South Australia in the mid-1850s and started growing olives, lemons, oranges, almonds and vines for raisin and currant production (this shifted into wine production later on).

Hardy’s Mammoths are a mutation of one of the original olive trees that Hardy was growing. He identified one tree as being different to its parents and named it after himself.

The name Hardy’s Mammoths suggest that they are huge but to be honest, they are only slightly larger than Kalamatas. Picked and preserved green, this is a mild tasting table olive that is perfect for eating as is.

We use them for: Table olives.

Frantoio

Originally from Tuscany in Italy home, the Frantoio is one of the most highly acclaimed oil varieties in the world. Incidentally, it goes by 19 other names including Paragon, Frantoiano, Correggiolo, Raggio, Gentile and Razzo. This variety of olive is such a big deal that in Tuscany, an olive oil processing factory is also called a ‘Frantoio’.

We use them for: Extra Virgin Olive Oil.