Domaine Adonis Bets on Traditional Orchards and Organic Production

In the five years since its first olive cam­paign in 2019, Domaine Adonis’s Tunisian extra vir­gin olive oils have col­lected the indus­try’s most cov­eted awards.

Four of Domaine Adonis’s mono­va­ri­etals and one blend received Gold Awards at the 2022 New York International Olive Oil Competition (NYIOOC).

“Such awards mean a lot for our com­pany. We are a very small busi­ness. Winning this kind of com­pe­ti­tion con­tributed sub­stan­tially to make our EVOOs com­pete on the world stage. Domaine Adonis did not need to go look­ing for clients — they come look­ing for our EVOOs,” Salah Ben Ayed, owner of the farm, told Olive Oil Times.

In 2015, Ayed, who owns other agri-food enter­prises, bought an olive farm in north­west Tunisia, on the hills of Mjez El Beb, with 2,900 olive trees.

“Many of those trees had been planted by the French colonists at the end of the 19^th Century. To those, we added all the olive trees that we could, so today we take care of approx­i­mately thir­teen thou­sand olive trees,” Ayed said.

Many of the trees come from renowned local cul­ti­vars, such as Chetoui, Chemleli and Sayali. Other cul­ti­vars include Arbosana and Koroneiki. ​“Ours are not inten­sive orchards; they are all tra­di­tional sets to which we added irri­ga­tion sys­tems mainly used in the warmest period of the year,” Ayed noted.

From the begin­ning, water scarcity has been an issue for the farm.

“Looking at the dry weather, we chose vari­eties such as Chemleli as they tend to be highly resilient to such con­di­tions. Interestingly, the dif­fer­ent cli­mate, the dif­fer­ent soil char­ac­ter­is­tics and the height of our hills made the trees give us olives with a fla­vor very dif­fer­ent from what they usu­ally bear in the south, where Chemleli is mostly grown,” Ayed noted.

“The olive trees we have planted, I feel them as they were my chil­dren. You worry if one of them gets sick. And look­ing at them grow­ing up fills me with joy,” he added.

“If all of this is hap­pen­ing, it is because of our love for nature. About 40 of our 100 hectares are for­est land. We banned hunt­ing there and made some water avail­able to the ani­mals liv­ing there. You might find some of those birds only in our for­est,” Ayed noted.

Today, Domaine Adonis EVOOs are organ­i­cally pro­duced. It did not start that way.

“In 2016, we tested con­ven­tional farm­ing with pes­ti­cides and other chem­i­cals. But we soon real­ized that such con­ven­tional approach is not good for nature. When I talk about nature, I talk of birds, boars, insects and so on,” Ayed explained.

“That year, we real­ized that water for irri­ga­tion or rain­fall was mix­ing up with the chem­i­cal com­pounds. Such mix­ture was then being absorbed by the local water-hun­gry fauna. When we under­stood that, our approach changed rad­i­cally. There are birds com­ing on our trees to drink,” Ayed recalled.

Since its first com­mer­cial har­vest in 2019, Domaine Adonis has obtained the organic cer­ti­fi­ca­tion released by a sole Italy-based oper­a­tor. ​“Every year, we get some on-site inves­ti­ga­tion, there is report­ing to do and so on. Our cus­tomers eat a health­ier olive oil,” he added.

A few years after plant­ing the new olive trees, Domaine Adonis bought its olive oil mill, which Ayed directly oper­ates.

“In 2021/2022, we had our great­est result so far with 15,000 liters of olive oil. In the cur­rent sea­son, we reached 9,000, but in a mat­ter of years, we expect to reach 20,000 as the trees grow,” he said.

“I do oper­ate the olive mill, and while it is a chal­leng­ing task to oper­ate it in the best pos­si­ble way, the true chal­lenge comes after the har­vest. And that is the sale price of our EVOOs,” he added.

Ayed under­lined how pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil requires hard work in the fields all year. To that effort, elec­tric­ity and fuel costs must be added. The olive oil mar­ket does not eas­ily account for these costs.

“It is highly prob­lem­atic to place our EVOOs at a price which one might con­sider bal­anced. We can­not sell one liter of high-qual­ity olive oil at €4 or €5,” he explained.

Bulk sales dom­i­nate the olive oil mar­ket in Tunisia, and while olive oil is a sta­ple prod­uct of the local cui­sine, expen­di­ture for qual­ity EVOOs is lim­ited.

“Most of those who con­sume olive oil do not really know much about its qual­ity. And that is true in Tunisia but it is the same in many other coun­tries,” Ayed stressed.

“Other costs that should be con­sid­ered in deter­min­ing a fair price come from the uncer­tain­ties of the cli­mate as well as the alter­nate bear­ing sea­sons of the olive trees, which make many trees deprived of olives in off-years,” Ayed noted.

While some pro­duc­tion hic­cups might be esti­mated, some can­not be entirely pre­dicted. The Mediterranean mega-drought that crip­pled olive farm­ing in the west­ern Mediterranean Basin through­out the last sea­son rep­re­sents an exam­ple of one such extra­or­di­nary event.

“We are not see­ing and did not see any rain­fall for so long, a sit­u­a­tion which nobody here has ever seen before,” Ayed noted. Given its effects on olive yields, rain­fall scarcity rep­re­sents a high oper­at­ing cost.

“That is why we export, as we are look­ing for a fair price for our prod­ucts. We do not export large quan­ti­ties, but the price is fair. We sold in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and will soon be sell­ing in South Korea as well,” Ayed noted.

“A fair income is indis­pens­able to make this project work. I would even pre­fer not to sell part of our EVOOs should that sup­port a fair price,” he explained.

• Official Guide to the World’s Best Olive Oils