Tour in Tunisia Explores Olive Oil Culture and Cuisine

A new oleo­tourism route in Tunisia has been launched, high­light­ing the country’s food and cul­ture. The Sfax Oleo Tour includes vis­its to olive farms, mills and local projects run by arti­sans and entre­pre­neurs work­ing with deriv­a­tives of the olive tree and its fruit.

The tourism ini­tia­tive fits into a broader project encom­pass­ing a series of coun­try-wide itin­er­aries cel­e­brat­ing Tunisia’s culi­nary her­itage, par­tic­u­larly del­i­ca­cies such as cheese, wine, harissa, dates, octo­pus, table olives and extra vir­gin olive oil.

The mis­sion of the Sfax Oleo Tour is to pro­mote sus­tain­able tourism and encour­age an alter­na­tive model that steps away from the beach hol­i­days the North African coun­try has long had at the cen­ter of its tourism mar­ket­ing strat­egy.

In December, the first edi­tion of this Sfax olive oil culi­nary route had a four-day test run with close to two dozen par­tic­i­pants, includ­ing olive oil experts from Italy, Turkey, France and Croatia, tourism pro­fes­sion­als and local and inter­na­tional jour­nal­ists.

Situated on Tunisia’s east­ern coast­line, Sfax is the sixth largest and sec­ond most pop­u­lated gov­er­norate. The region is home to 10 mil­lion olive trees and 440 pro­duc­ers. Sfax is respon­si­ble for about 30 per­cent of Tunisian olive oil pro­duc­tion.

“Sfax is the cap­i­tal of olive oil in Tunisia,” said Faouzi Zayani, pres­i­dent of the Tunisia Olive Association based in Sfax. ​“Here, we have 32,000 hectares cov­ered with olive trees. Our local vari­ety is Chemlali, a vari­etal resis­tant to ill­nesses and the drought con­di­tions our region is prone to.”

As part of the itin­er­ary, the group stopped at the Huilerie Hamed Kamoun olive mill in Sfax, which dates back to 1820 and where the tra­di­tional press­ing method uti­liz­ing a grind­ing stone and hydraulic press con­tin­ues today.

Participants also saw one of the many Tunisian mills equipped with state-of-the-art extrac­tion tech­nol­ogy at the Ben Said family’s Dear Goodness olive farm in Hazeg, north of Sfax.

An olive oil itin­er­ary is, of course, not com­plete with­out a tast­ing ses­sion. Sonda Laroussi Mezghani and her team of expert tasters at Olea Conseils led par­tic­i­pants through a guided tast­ing of a selec­tion of high-qual­ity Tunisian extra vir­gin olive oils.

Meanwhile, a stop at the organic farm run by Mohamed Maazoun pro­vided an intro­duc­tion to the bio­dy­namic farm­ing sys­tem for the pro­duc­tion of olives as well as local pro­duce cul­ti­vated exclu­sively with organic and locally sourced fer­til­iz­ers.

“The olive tree brings peo­ple together,” said Laroussi Mezghani. ​“It’s a magic and gen­er­ous tree. My goal is to share the cul­ture of Tunisia’s olive oil tra­di­tion.”

In 2014, Olea Conseils became Tunisia’s first inde­pen­dent olive oil-tast­ing panel rec­og­nized by the International Olive Council. In 2023, it opened its lab­o­ra­tory for sen­sory and physico-chem­i­cal analy­sis of olive oil, also receiv­ing the IOC’s stamp of approval.

The group had the oppor­tu­nity to inter­act with olive pro­duc­ers, pro­fes­sion­als, local arti­sans, and entre­pre­neurs work­ing with deriv­a­tives of the olive tree and its fruit.

The expe­ri­en­tial approach of the culi­nary and cul­tural itin­er­ary pro­vided a chance to get to know Tunisia’s culi­nary her­itage through each of the senses via cook­ing demon­stra­tions and tast­ings of typ­i­cal local spe­cial­ties and prod­ucts made with olive oil.

Extra vir­gin olive oil is a key ingre­di­ent in many local arti­sanal del­i­ca­cies hand­crafted by Sfax-based entre­pre­neur Dalenda Ellouze of Dose Et D’mi.

“Quality is every­thing. That’s why I use only the best qual­ity olive oil I can find,” she said while recre­at­ing her grandmother’s ances­tral recipe for lak­louka, a local pas­try made of mil­let flour, raisins and Chemlali olive oil.

Olive oil is also a vital ingre­di­ent in hrouss (spicy chili pep­per paste) and bsissa (a sweet paste made of seeds, herbs and cere­als), as well as other gourmet prod­ucts hand­crafted by her team and which par­tic­i­pants had the oppor­tu­nity to sam­ple.

Other women entre­pre­neurs shared how they uti­lize every part of the olive tree in their arti­sanal cre­ations and prod­ucts.

Rania Mseddi of Ovarti Olive Wood show­cased her dec­o­ra­tive objects, bowls and kitchen uten­sils carved from the wood of the olive tree.

Meanwhile, Leila Hamma showed that olive oil is a vital ingre­di­ent in the beauty creams and oils she pro­duces, while Halima Babay demon­strated how she crafts nat­ural soaps from ​“liq­uid gold.”

The com­plete sen­sory expe­ri­ence offered by the itin­er­ary was rounded off with olive oil treat­ments and mas­sages at Spa Mahassen, founded by Mahassen Keskes Jmel, another enthu­si­as­tic local woman entre­pre­neur.

Another impor­tant aspect of the Sfax Oleo Tour includes the oppor­tu­nity to stay in rural guest­houses run by local peo­ple to pro­mote an alter­na­tive model of tourism that takes vis­i­tors away from the beach resorts and into Tunisia’s abun­dant olive groves.

The itin­er­ary includes stays at tra­di­tional guest­houses on rural prop­er­ties scat­tered with olive trees, such as Dar Lella Aicha and Gîte Feki, where home-cooked meals are pre­pared with locally-grown pro­duce, as well as an overnight at Amber Park for eco­logic camp­ing.

“Our tar­get groups include both Tunisians and inter­na­tional vis­i­tors to Tunisia,” said Naziha Grati Kammoun, head of the Sfax olive oil culi­nary route project and vice-pres­i­dent of the Tunisia Olive Association. ​“It’s designed for a vari­ety of guests, from fam­i­lies to solo trav­el­ers.”

“Apart from show­cas­ing Tunisia’s culi­nary her­itage, other impor­tant objec­tives of the project include the cre­ation of job oppor­tu­ni­ties and the involve­ment of women and young peo­ple in sus­tain­able tourism,” she added.

“We have 22 local part­ners who are part of the culi­nary itin­er­ary who are pas­sion­ate about local her­itage and are com­mit­ted to the project,” Grati con­tin­ued. ​“We devel­oped and imple­mented a three-month train­ing pro­gram for them in a vari­ety of mod­ules such as entre­pre­neur­ship, man­age­ment, sto­ry­telling, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, as well as olive oil sen­sory assess­ment and culi­nary arts.”

A com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­egy is being devel­oped to take the next step toward pro­mot­ing the Sfax Oleo Tour.

As trav­el­ers increas­ingly look for unique expe­ri­ences that allow them to get close to a country’s local cul­ture, an ini­tia­tive such as the Sfax Oleo Tour is an exam­ple of a cul­tural itin­er­ary that engages all the senses while lead­ing vis­i­tors ​“off the beaten track.”

At the same time, this inno­v­a­tive project is a step beyond the usual for­mat of olive oil tourism, which is often mostly lim­ited to vis­its to groves and olive mills.