Modern Techniques and Ancient Groves a Winning Combination for Solar Olives

On the edge of the vil­lage of Kour, in the rolling hills of north­ern Lebanon, sprawl the olive trees of Solar Olives.

Many of the trees have grown here, about 450 meters above sea level, for hun­dreds of years, planted in the 19^th cen­tury in orderly rows on over­lap­ping ter­races rein­forced by but­tresses of dry-piled stones.

Untouched by petro­leum-based fer­til­iz­ers or pes­ti­cides, the pro­duc­ers behind Solar Olives craft one of the world’s best olive oils from these trees.

This was evi­denced when the Lebanese pro­ducer earned a Gold Award at the 2022 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition for its organic del­i­cate Souri, which the judges said had tast­ing sen­sa­tions of flow­ers, vanilla, berry, red fruits and apple.

“Tradition is so rel­e­vant to us,” Karim Arsanios, a chef and owner of Solar Olives, told Olive Oil Times.” Olive trees have been with us for mil­len­nia. So we try to infuse tra­di­tion into our prod­ucts. Sure, the design of the prod­uct or the tech­nol­ogy used to make our extra vir­gin olive oils might be very advanced, but tra­di­tion is the essence of what we do.”

“Even the name of our prod­uct, Solar, has been cre­ated with tra­di­tion in mind,” he added. ​“As we have joined sun, the sol, with ​‘a’ and ​‘r,’ which con­nect us to my par­ents who are not with us any­more and took care of the olive trees with so much pas­sion for so many years. ​“We were so happy to learn of the Gold Award. It came as a beau­ti­ful sur­prise.”

Located in the heart of a fer­tile region where olives have been grown for mil­len­nia, the family’s size­able stone-walled coun­try house was built in the first half of the 19^th cen­tury, when olive grow­ing started to assume a rel­e­vant role for the Arsanios fam­ily.

“That expe­ri­ence, that knowl­edge has passed from one gen­er­a­tion to the next,” Arsanios said. ​“In recent years, we added a few things and changed oth­ers, of course, but a fully organic approach and the con­stant atten­tion to the health of our olive trees are always there.”

“We are lucky because we live in a region not far from the sea, so there are spe­cific min­eral con­tents in the alka­line soil,” he added. ​“That also means that when it rains, the soil tends to have excel­lent water reten­tion. Plus, at our mod­er­ate alti­tude, win­ters are not too cold. In the sum­mer­time, it can be warm, but we still enjoy the breeze.”

Understanding that soil health is key to his suc­cess, Arsanios allows plenty of other veg­e­ta­tion to grow among the olive trees and allows his neighbor’s chick­ens to roam free as well.

Both of these tech­niques help Arsanios strengthen the bio­di­ver­sity of his olive groves while nat­u­rally keep­ing pests and pathogens in check.

“Of course, you still need to go through the trees every day, look at them, prune them when needed,” he said. ​“Of course, you have to check the olives as they grow, to remove those even­tu­ally attacked by insects, mak­ing sure the trees and their fruits are strong.”

While the fam­ily farm is steeped in tra­di­tion, the lat­est gen­er­a­tion is not afraid to make changes in their efforts to main­tain qual­ity. As a result, the tra­di­tional press was recently aban­doned in favor of tak­ing the olives to a new mill.

The fam­ily fur­ther inno­vated by chang­ing the sched­ule of their har­vest­ing oper­a­tions based on learn­ing about more up-to-date best prac­tices.

“In recent years, I felt a few things needed to be changed,” Arsanios said. ​“Once, we waited for the first rain to come in before pro­ceed­ing with the har­vest.”

“I found that to be the most awk­ward time to har­vest, given the effects of rain on the trees, the olives and the oper­a­tions,” he added. ​“So we set up a new approach, har­vest­ing much ear­lier than that, sac­ri­fic­ing some vol­ume but sig­nif­i­cantly enhanc­ing qual­ity.”

The major­ity of the com­pa­ny’s olive trees are of the Souri cul­ti­var, which was once also known as Roman, a name pri­mar­ily used to show the ancient ori­gin of this vari­ety. Souri has been planted by the Arsanios fam­ily for gen­er­a­tions, with the youngest trees being slightly more than 20 years old.

“Ninety-five per­cent of our trees are Souri. Although we have some Kalamata olives, these are only for self-con­sump­tion,” Arsanios said. ​“We use Souri both for olive oil and table olives.”

“The way we like to eat them in Lebanon is to har­vest the olives, and three months later, hav­ing rested in a brine, they have a dis­tinct bit­ter­ness paired with the spici­ness of the brine,” he added. ​“The same hap­pens with our extra vir­gin olive oil. It has a dis­tinct bit­ter note; still, it also shows some sweet­ness.”

According to Arsanios, Souri olives show slightly dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter­is­tics through­out the har­vest sea­son.

“It takes us a month to com­plete our har­vest,” he said. ​“During that period, you can see the fruit ripen­ing, going from green to yel­low and finally to black. These stages come with chang­ing aro­mas and tastes, a dif­fer­ent bal­ance of Souri’s unique char­ac­ter­is­tics.”

Every day, the olives are trans­formed, and the result­ing olive oil is stored in steel con­tain­ers, pro­tected from oxy­gen, light and tem­per­a­ture fluc­tu­a­tions.

Arsanios also mooted a poten­tial expan­sion of Solar Olives, with the pos­si­ble addi­tion of new olive groves con­tain­ing dif­fer­ent vari­eties. ​“We would like to begin exper­i­ment­ing with blends,” he said.

Due to the spe­cific qual­i­ties of the soil and the gen­er­ous cli­mate, Solar Olives cur­rently does not need to irri­gate its trees. However, the cli­mate is chang­ing, and the need to invest in drip irri­ga­tion sys­tems might not be far off.

“Maybe we will need to turn to irri­ga­tion in the years to come because of cli­mate change,” Arsanios said. ​“Things are chang­ing. We do not know how cli­mate change will affect farm­ing, but we can see in north Lebanon wild­fires hap­pen­ing ear­lier in the sea­son. As we expect very hot sum­mers, wild­fires will be some­thing to con­sider.”

Another sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge for the pro­ducer is pro­mot­ing an olive oil cul­ture in the coun­try. Despite being home to some of the old­est olive trees in the Mediterranean, and known since Phoenician times for its olive oil trade, Lebanon is cur­rently a tough mar­ket for extra vir­gin olive oil.

“Not many Lebanese are cur­rently explor­ing the dif­fer­ent health and fla­vor pro­files of excel­lent extra vir­gin olive oil,” Arsanios said. ​“Most of them will buy cheaper olive oils.”

While part of the prob­lem is the result of the cur­rent eco­nomic cri­sis that has crip­pled the econ­omy, Arsanios believes much has to be done to spread olive oil cul­ture.

“Having said that, we feel lucky as we nur­ture our rela­tion­ship with the land,” he said. ​“We live in such a fast-paced hyper-cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety, and we tend to be sev­ered from nature. We do not know what we eat, where food comes from.”

“That is why we are work­ing on the idea of trans­form­ing this beau­ti­ful ancient house into a farm­house where guests could enjoy our beau­ti­ful sur­round­ings, walk among the trees, taste excel­lent olive oil and come back to the roots,” Arsanios added.

Last year, Solar Olives orga­nized the ​“olive pick­ing day” where guests could explore the groves and taste Arsanios’ olive oil-cen­tric recipes. ​“It was an amaz­ing day, and we will do that this year as well,” he added.

However, it will take more than Arsanios to pro­mote an olive oil cul­ture, and the pro­ducer will need help from his neigh­bor­ing olive farm­ers.

“When we intro­duced those inno­va­tions, some of them were very per­plexed. Now that they see the results of our organic approach and the tech­niques we apply to take care of the trees, they are also becom­ing inter­ested in that,” he said.

“Slowly, peo­ple might be start­ing to real­ize how big a dif­fer­ence there is between lower qual­ity olive oil and excel­lent high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils,” Arsanios con­cluded.