Spain doesn’t just make olive oil, it is olive oil.
Andalucía sits at the heart of that. It’s part of the largest olive oil producing region in the world, with Spain contributing to around a quarter of the global supply. When you’re talking about olive oil at scale and heritage, Spain sets the bar.
We love working with Puglia for its peppery, green intensity, but Spain’s oil is different in all the best ways. It’s fruity, rounded, and the kind of oil you glug over just about everything. The most quintessential extra virgin olive oil I’ve tasted.
Being There Still Matters
This year, we made the trip to Andalucía to be part of the harvest again. As with our visit to Puglia, the trip goes far beyond a marketing opportunity (as beautiful as it is). Being there matters because it’s the only way to properly witness the harvest, understand the traditions, and judge quality in real time.
The light, the temperature, how ripe the olives are, it all plays a role. Oils change week by week, and sometimes day by day. Staying close to the process helps us understand those shifts and make informed choices.
A Different Character, the Same Obsession with Quality
Italian olive oil often gets the loudest praise, but what’s interesting is how consistently Spanish oils perform on the global stage. Year after year, producers from Spain quietly dominate international competitions, a reflection of the depth, skill, and precision coming out of regions like Andalucía.
For us though, awards aren’t the point. Character is.
Spanish olive oil has an ease to it. It’s generous, approachable, and incredibly versatile. It doesn’t demand attention or ask to be analysed. It just does what great olive oil should do: elevate food, every day.
The Varieties and Why We Blend
In this part of Andalucía, three olive varieties shape the harvest:
- Picual: structured, slightly piquant, and full of backbone
- Hojiblanca: fruity, aromatic, and beautifully balanced
- Arbequina: soft and delicate, but quick to fade
Arbequina is lovely early on, but it loses its character within a few months. Because of that, we focus on a blend of Picual and Hojiblanca. Together, they create an oil that’s full and rounded, but still lively, one that holds its quality over time.
Blending is where the real craft comes in.
We don’t work from a fixed recipe. Olives are alive, and every harvest is different. The balance that worked last year won’t necessarily work this year. Sometimes a 1% adjustment is the difference between good and great. Getting that right takes experience, patience, and a lot of tasting.
An Oil Made for Everyday Cooking
If our Italian oil is made for drizzling and finishing, this Spanish oil is made for glugging and cooking with every day.
This is the oil you reach to for:
- glugging into a pan
- drizzling into hummus
- pouring over shakshuka
- generously dressing over salads and roasted vegetables
It's rounded, fruity and bright, perfect for just about everything.
Growing Fast, Staying True
This year, we’re buying over 100 tonnes of Spanish extra virgin olive oil, a huge step up from around 10 tonnes last year. Seeing that growth is incredibly rewarding, but it also comes with responsibility. Scaling only works if quality comes with it, and that means staying just as close to the process as ever.
Working across both Spain and Italy gives us two very different expressions of olive oil, one bold and peppery, the other fruity and rounded. Different roles, different moments, same obsession.
Because great olive oil isn’t about hype or trends.
It’s about choosing well, season after season.
And sometimes, it’s simply about recognising when something is exactly what it should be.
