An Olive Oil as Unique as Its Producers

For olive grow­ers on Croatia’s Istrian penin­sula, the next har­vest is being antic­i­pated with cau­tious opti­mism.

“We hope for a pos­i­tive result, but with­out tri­umphant tones,” 48-year-old Saša Petković, an increas­ingly suc­cess­ful Istrian olive grower, told Olive Oil Times.

He lives with his wife, Vedrana Rakovac, and daugh­ter, Ivana, who has just fin­ished high school in Pula, Istria’s largest city. Their olive groves are in the vil­lage of Rakovci, 50 kilo­me­ters away, halfway between Poreč and Pazin.

“The cli­mate here is more con­ti­nen­tal than the Mediterranean,” Petković said. ​“In sum­mer, tem­per­a­tures are extremely high dur­ing the day and low at night. The posi­tion on the bor­der between coastal Istria and its inte­rior has a good effect on the health and resis­tance of plants as well as on the qual­ity of the fruits.”

There, they grow 600 olive trees in five loca­tions. Out of a total of 14 vari­eties, the most rep­re­sented are domes­tic vari­eties (Istrian bjel­ica, Buža, Buga and Buža pun­toža) and domes­ti­cated for­eign, pre­dom­i­nantly Italian, vari­eties such as Leccino, Pendolino, Maurina, Frantoia and Itrana.

Given the cli­mate and alti­tude, there is almost no need to treat olives against dis­eases and pests. However, since this year was extremely rainy, there were prob­lems with the pea­cock’s eye.

There have been no pests so far, but Petković and Rakovac are prepar­ing traps for the olive fruit fly, the most sig­nif­i­cant pest that can destroy all the efforts of olive grow­ers.

“We use the method that Vedrana’s grand­fa­ther, Nina, taught us: we pierce empty plas­tic bot­tles and fill them halfway with a mix­ture of water, vine­gar and sugar,” Petković and Rakovac said. ​“Attracted by the smells, the flies enter, but do not man­age to get out, so they die in the bot­tles. This method proved to be very suc­cess­ful for us.”

Rakovac inher­ited the olive groves from her grand­fa­ther. Although they had good jobs in Pula, the spouses decided 15 years ago to restore the farm and plant new olive trees.

Rakovac is a civil engi­neer­ing grad­u­ate, and Petković is an econ­o­mist, an expert in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and a drum­mer in a local rock band.

In addi­tion to work­ing in the olive grove, he now runs his own mar­ket­ing com­pany and has not aban­doned his gig either. On var­i­ous occa­sions, he sits down on the drums and plays con­certs with the guys from the band.

“The fee comes in handy for repair­ing the house­hold bud­get,” he said with a char­ac­ter­is­tic smile.

Seven years ago, Rakovac devoted her­self entirely to run­ning the fam­ily busi­ness, OPG Rakovac. In the mean­time, she com­pleted a course at the Open University in Pula and man­ages the sale of the company’s olive oil.

“We sell the oil through our web­site, as well as in our small tast­ing room in Pula, in an approx­i­mate ratio of half and half,” the cou­ple said. ​“Since 2015, when we became seri­ously engaged in the pro­duc­tion and sale of olive oil, it has not hap­pened that we have oil from the pre­vi­ous har­vest left over after the fol­low­ing har­vest. We man­age to sell the entire quan­tity we pro­duce.”

In addi­tion to olive groves and an olive oil shop, OPG Rakovac rents two apart­ments in Pula dur­ing the tourist sea­son.

Petković skill­fully man­ages mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion, so the Bilini brand is already widely known. The brand name Bilini comes from the fam­ily nick­name of Vedrana’s grand­mother, Đina.

As there were many fam­i­lies with the sur­name Rakovac in the vil­lage of Rakovci, some had nick­names that dis­tin­guished them from oth­ers.

“Therefore, in honor of our elders, who planted our olive groves and influ­enced our path and olive-grow­ing des­tiny, we named our oil Bilini,” Petković and Rakovac said.

They also explained why they mainly pro­duce mul­ti­va­ri­etal extra vir­gin olive oil. ​“There are two rea­sons for this: first, it should be noted that our olive trees are not planted ​‘sequen­tially’ by vari­eties, which means that we often have five to six dif­fer­ent vari­eties in one row, tree after tree,” the cou­ple said.

“This would make ​‘mono­va­ri­etal’ har­vest­ing extremely dif­fi­cult,” Petković added. ​“Second: we believe that blends or oils of mixed vari­eties sat­isfy the tastes of the widest num­ber of peo­ple. They retain the best char­ac­ter­is­tics of all the vari­eties from which the oil is made.”

The cou­ple point to the num­ber of inter­na­tional awards won by Bilini – a medium-inten­sity blend of Frantoio, Leccino, Buza, Bjelica and Pendolino olives – as evi­dence of this, includ­ing a Gold Award at the 2023 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

“Awards are impor­tant to us pri­mar­ily because they boost our morale,” Petković said. ​“When you work in an olive grove all year round, you go through all the stages of suf­fer­ing: from freez­ing dur­ing win­ter plow­ing to boil­ing while fill­ing the olive fly traps in mid-July, from mow­ing and prun­ing to fer­til­iz­ing and har­vest­ing.”

“It’s hard. As old peo­ple say: ​‘the earth is low,’” he added. ​“You leave your spine in the olive grove. But when recog­ni­tion comes from the pro­fes­sion, all the effort invested takes on a higher mean­ing, and we move on with charged bat­ter­ies.”

“Of course, awards are also an excel­lent mar­ket­ing tool because more and more peo­ple want to buy award-win­ning oil, the qual­ity of which has been con­firmed by inde­pen­dent experts,” Petković con­tin­ued.

Except for 2020, when their bot­tles did not arrive on time to sub­mit a sam­ple to the com­pe­ti­tion, Bilini has been awarded at the NYIOOC every year since 2018. Even so, Petković believes the qual­ity that year was just as good as any other.

Despite the ris­ing pro­file of their extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­tion, Petković and Rakovac said olive grow­ing remains a hobby, pas­sion project, and career for them.

Over the years, their mar­ket­ing trans­formed the project from a hobby into a busi­ness, but that does not change the fact that they are still absolute enthu­si­asts for all kinds of work in olive groves.

“We are a small OPG, and – as a curios­ity – we note that absolutely every bot­tle of Bilini oil we have placed on the mar­ket so far has been filled and sealed by hand,” the cou­ple said.

In each of the past 10 years, they have filled about 1,500 bot­tles rang­ing from 100 mil­li­liters to 1 liter in size. ​“For some­thing like that, you have to have a pas­sion for this job,” they said.

“I would say that the unique­ness of our oil is a reflec­tion of our unique­ness as peo­ple,” they added. ​“Our jobs, lifestyles, enthu­si­asm, atten­tion to detail, per­sis­tence, sac­ri­fice and uncom­pro­mis­ing qual­ity ulti­mately make Bilini oil.”

Petković and Rakovac are proud of Istria and the region’s abil­ity to inte­grate oleo­tourism and olive oil pro­duc­tion seam­lessly. They are glad that other parts of Europe have taken notice.

“Our region is full of cre­ative and curi­ous peo­ple who do not stop at already tried and tested cul­ti­va­tion meth­ods but con­stantly move for­ward and self­lessly share knowl­edge,” said Petković, who shares his olive grow­ing expe­ri­ence on his company’s blog.

In addi­tion to the olive trees on the OPG Rakovac estate, in the future, they want to plant other crops, pri­mar­ily figs, and ded­i­cate them­selves to this new endeavor with the same atten­tion and pas­sion as they have been doing with olives and olive oil for 10 years.

However, the approach of the 2023 har­vest remains top of mind for the pro­duc­ers. Last year, they pro­duced about 1,300 liters of extra vir­gin olive oil.

“According to the first inspec­tion of the fruit, this year, we expect a slightly smaller crop, and we will do our best to keep the qual­ity at the cur­rent level,” the cou­ple con­cluded.