For Award-Winning Producer Aires de Jaén, Sustainability Is Key to Quality

The pro­duc­ers behind Aires de Jaén are cel­e­brat­ing the two Gold Awards they won at the 2023 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

They said the awards con­firm their vision and vin­di­cate the invest­ments made by the com­pany in the last sev­eral years.

“We are very happy with the wins,” Matias López Sanchez-Polaina, the gen­eral man­ager of pro­duc­tion, told Olive Oil Times.

“I’m happy for us and our work­ers, experts and col­lab­o­ra­tors who make this pos­si­ble,” he added. ​“It val­i­dates our path of cre­at­ing a cir­cu­lar econ­omy and being sus­tain­able.”

It is the fifth time the pro­duc­ers’ extra vir­gin olive oils have received top awards at the com­pe­ti­tion.

Situated in Jaén – the Andalusian province respon­si­ble for a sig­nif­i­cant share of Spanish olive oil pro­duc­tion – Aires de Jaén’s olive groves sit along­side the Guadalquivir River.

“That is where our Finca Badenes extra vir­gin olive oil is born,” López Sanchez-Polaina said. ​“It is an area ded­i­cated to olive grow­ing since Roman times. Since then, the river has been called the gold river.”

Today, the com­pany exports extra vir­gin olive oil to dozens of coun­tries, man­ages its own mill and can store up to 20 mil­lion liters of olive oil. The farms’ olive groves include tra­di­tional orchards and high-den­sity (inten­sive) and super-high-den­sity (super-inten­sive) plan­ta­tions.

Most of Aires de Jaén’s olive oil is pro­duced from Arbequina, Picual, Empeltre and Frantoio cul­ti­vars, which they blend before export­ing over­seas.

“Our fam­ily started as farm­ers at the Finca Los Badenes in 1965, and 30 years later, our par­ents started cul­ti­vat­ing olive trees,” López Sanchez-Polaina said.

After sev­eral expe­ri­ences in food multi­na­tion­als, the gen­eral direc­tor and his sis­ter Rosa took charge of the com­pany in 2010 with the goal of sus­tain­abil­ity. Their three nephews are also active in the export divi­sion of the com­pany.

Every year, its indus­trial plant bot­tles up to nine mil­lion liters of olive oil. ​“Half of the energy required to pro­duce our olive oil bot­tles comes from solar energy,” López Sanchez-Polaina said.

As a large pro­ducer and exporter, the com­pany also relies on a net­work of olive farms, which fol­low stan­dard prac­tices.

“We are increas­ingly focused on the cir­cu­lar econ­omy,” López Sanchez-Polaina said. ​“Take the veg­e­ta­tion [olive waste] water. It con­sti­tutes approx­i­mately half of what the olive pro­duces. We are re-using it to clean the olives and treat­ing it to re-use it in the field.”

Leaves and branches from prun­ing and mill oper­a­tions enrich the soil. The olive pits are also used as fuel for the fac­tory water sys­tems.

“At the point where we are now, there are no left­overs from the olive milling oper­a­tions,” López Sanchez-Polaina said. ​“We pro­duce zero waste.”

Given the uncer­tain­ties of the cli­mate, chang­ing local and European Union reg­u­la­tions and the need to limit water use, Aires de Jaén does not irri­gate its groves with sur­face water.

“The irri­ga­tion infra­struc­ture runs about half a meter into the ground to min­i­mize evap­o­ra­tion,” López Sanchez-Polaina said, sug­gest­ing that olive pro­duc­ers play a crit­i­cal role in tak­ing care of the envi­ron­ment and pass­ing the approach to the new gen­er­a­tions.

López Sanchez-Polaina cites daily care of the groves as one of the secrets behind the qual­ity of the prod­uct.

“It is cru­cial,” he said. ​“Looking at the olives, at the health of the trees and then choos­ing the exact tim­ing for har­vest. For our early har­vest prod­ucts, we will wait for the green olive to start turn­ing pur­ple.”

Given the early har­vest needs and the daily tem­per­a­tures, which remain high in October, when the har­vest usu­ally begins, the com­pany keeps an eye open on the tem­per­a­ture of the olives.

“We do not want to col­lect olives at high tem­per­a­tures,” López Sanchez-Polaina said. ​“This means to avoid the har­vest in the warmest hours of the day, and it implies a very quick trans­fer of the olives to our olive mill.”

“Sometimes, even in November, tem­per­a­tures are still so high,” he added. ​“Only 10 or 15 years ago, we would not have been here think­ing about how to approach this prob­lem.”

As a result, Aires de Jaén has invested in tech­nol­ogy to keep the olives cool from reach­ing the mill until the com­ple­tion of the trans­for­ma­tion process.

“We work very hard to avoid the olive and olive paste tem­per­a­ture exceed­ing 23 ºC,” López Sanchez-Polaina said.

“Oleotourism and learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties tar­geted to the con­sumers are also part of the efforts of the com­pany to spread a cul­ture of high-qual­ity pro­duc­tion,” he added.

Consumers are invited to the com­pa­ny’s premises to dis­cover the sur­round­ings, explore the groves, and directly assist in pro­duc­tion.

“Many events in ancient and more mod­ern his­tory have hap­pened in the region, so we can com­bine such his­toric land­marks and loca­tions with inter­est shown by many con­sumers to explore the olive oil world,” López Sanchez-Polaina said.

“They can taste our olive oils directly from the hands of our experts, as to live an enrich­ing expe­ri­ence,” he added. ​“Increasingly, our chal­lenge is to help con­sumers see the dif­fer­ences between a reg­u­lar extra vir­gin olive oil and the more exquis­ite, fra­grant taste of high-qual­ity prod­ucts.”