An Oasis of Award-Winning EVOO in Tabernas

The esparto grass-cov­ered hills and dry ravines of the Tabernas desert are not the usual back­drops to grow olive trees in Spain.

With just 200mm of annual rain­fall (7.8 inches) — less than that in the areas by the sea — and over 300 days of sun­shine every year, this cor­ner in the south­east­ern province of Almería is con­sid­ered the dri­est place in Europe.

Its weather is extreme: the 400m (15748 feet) ele­va­tion above sea level makes tem­per­a­tures vary from very hot sum­mers to cool win­ters.

Sergio Leone, the Italian film­maker, and many oth­ers chose Tabernas and its sur­round­ing areas as a film loca­tion for Spaghetti Westerns.

The Mexican vil­lages and the American far West land­scapes where Clint Eastwood per­formed The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and For a Few Dollars More were, in fact, the old ​“cor­ti­jos” (Andalusian coun­try houses) and vil­lages of this long-for­got­ten region.

Growing olive trees and any other crops in this area requires spe­cial tech­niques and a good amount of deter­mi­na­tion.

As he dri­ves through the 100-hectares (247-acre) olive grove, Rafael Alonso, export and mar­ket­ing man­ager of Oro del Desierto (Gold of the desert), told Olive Oil Times that when his father started pro­duc­ing extra vir­gin olive oil in Tabernas 20 years ago, some peo­ple hes­i­tated about the qual­ity of the prod­uct he could obtain in this arid land.

In 2017, Oro del Desierto, which is still a fam­ily-run com­pany, won a Gold Award and a Best in Class Award in the New York International Olive Oil Competition.

Traditional oil-pro­duc­ing provinces like Jaén, Córdoba, Sevilla and Granada are not far away, but the con­di­tions in Almería are quite dif­fer­ent. And they affect the fea­tures of the olive oil.

“Our region being so dry and hav­ing so much sun com­pared to other Mediterranean regions, makes our oil — I would not say bet­ter than oth­ers — but very dif­fer­ent. Our oils are very aro­matic, not too pun­gent, not as strong as oth­ers,” Rafael argues.

The Alonso family’s estate lies in a val­ley sur­rounded by bare moun­tains a few kilo­me­tres away from Tabernas, a vil­lage with a pop­u­la­tion of 3000.

“Water is the main con­cern here”, Alonso said.

“As long as we are in a desert, we need to irri­gate the trees. We found sev­eral wells and that is the main source at the moment. But we are not far from the sea, around 30 kilo­me­ters (18.6 miles), and there is a project for bring­ing water from a desalin­iza­tion facil­ity in the future,” he added.

We have stopped at a spot in the mid­dle of the estate. A group of horses seeks shade under a big solar panel. Both the ani­mals and the energy-pro­duc­ing device play an impor­tant role in the way olive trees are cul­ti­vated here.

“We pump the water from the wells from between 16 – 18 meters (18 – 19 yards) under­ground thanks to solar energy. All the energy we use here is solar energy,” Alonso explained.
See Also:Buy Oro Del Desierto Organic Coupage
The 25,000-tree estate is irri­gated by a drip­ping sys­tem. In most of the fields, the tubes are buried 40 cen­time­ters (16 inches) under­ground to pre­vent evap­o­ra­tion.

Before drip­ping irri­ga­tion sys­tems were applied, farm­ing in this region was very scarce.

“This was mainly cereal land. Olive trees were grown just on the banks of the ravines so they could ben­e­fit from the water run­ning through them once or twice a year. It was sub­sis­tence agri­cul­ture,” Rafael says.

Now things have changed. Although pro­duc­tion rates are lower here than in other Spanish regions, inten­sive farm­ing has become pos­si­ble.

But Alonso, an Environment sci­en­tist who a few years ago decided to join his family’s olive oil pro­duc­tion project, is a staunch defender of sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture.

And this is the point where the small black horses that roam the estate are a valu­able ally.

“They are very good com­bin­ing with this crop because they don’t like the olives. They don’t like the trees so they don’t eat them, but they eat the weeds. So they are kind of a nat­ural her­bi­cide,” Alonso noted.

“Some peo­ple mis­take them for ponies. But they are not. They belong to a race from Asturias, in Northern Spain, called astur­cón.”

Despite the obvi­ous con­straints that they imply, con­stant drought and high tem­per­a­tures also have some advan­tages for organic farm­ers.

​“There was very lim­ited farm­ing and in a very tra­di­tional way. So there was no con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and very lit­tle pres­sure in the ground. So it is a kind of vir­gin soil. So grow­ing some­thing in this kind of soil, and to be organ­ics, is eas­ier,” he said.

On the other hand, the lack of humid­ity makes it dif­fi­cult for to spread and grow as fast as they would in more rainy areas.

The com­bi­na­tion of four dif­fer­ent vari­eties of olive trees on the estate — Hojiblanca, Picual, Arbequina and Lechín — also helps to pre­vent the impact of pests as each cul­ti­var is affected by them dif­fer­ently.

20 years ago, when the Alonso fam­ily started pro­duc­ing organic farm­ing, their project was seen as an odd­ity in the region.

Now, other farm­ers are pro­duc­ing good qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil in the Tabernas desert and, slowly, olive trees are chang­ing this dra­matic land­scape.

“We strongly believe that sus­tain­abil­ity is not only think­ing about the envi­ron­ment. It is also think­ing about the peo­ple who live in the envi­ron­ment. So it is some­thing that we want to leave as a legacy.”