Old Ways Endure at Award-Winning Farm in Slovenia

Timotej Zupan dri­ves his pickup truck through nar­row roads up and down the hills on the way to his farm in Slovenian Istria, where he and Orjiana Hrvasti pro­duce Timor olive oil.

Small patches of olive groves alter­nate with forests of oaks and beeches, still with­out leaves in early spring, dot­ted with white blos­som­ing almond and prune trees.

This pleas­ant land­scape of rolling hills and deep val­leys that meet the sea is home of a cen­turies-long olive oil pro­duc­tion tra­di­tion and some Slovenian oils rank among the best in the world.

Slovenia has an annual olive oil pro­duc­tion of just 400 tons, accord­ing to the International Olive Council. This is a small fig­ure if com­pared with neigh­bor­ing Croatia, which pro­duces around 4,000 tons every year, Italy, with more than 185,000 or Spain, the biggest world pro­ducer, with more than 1.5 mil­lion tons.

​“Why Timor?,” I ask Timotej and Orjana, guess­ing that it may mean some­thing in Slovenian or that maybe they are related in some way to Timor, the Southeast Asian island.

“It’s sim­pler than that,” Orjana says. ​“It’s a com­bi­na­tion of our names. Timotej and Orjiana. That’s where Timor comes from.”

Most of the olive trees along the 47-kilo­me­ter-long stretch of Slovenian coast grow in nar­row ter­races exca­vated in the steep slopes of the hills.

Timor’s six olive groves are small and dis­persed, each con­tain­ing just a few dozens of olive trees. While some of the plots are by the coast, oth­ers are a few kilo­me­ters inland.

This is not unusual in this part of Slovenia –- as Orjana points out — where large estates are almost non-exis­tent after gen­er­a­tions of divid­ing the prop­er­ties among fam­ily mem­bers so that they can be inher­ited.

This frag­men­ta­tion com­bined with the rugged ter­rain makes it hard for machin­ery to access the olive groves. Thus, old ways of farm­ing endure.

As Timotej parks in one of their olive groves, Orjana argues that this appar­ent dis­ad­van­tage is key to under­stand­ing the high qual­ity of their prod­uct.

“Timotej takes care of the land and then all the fam­ily har­vests the olives by hand. That improves the qual­ity of the oil because the olives don’t suf­fer any harm. They reach the mill almost untouched,” she says.

“Also, hav­ing such small olive groves allows us to har­vest one after the other. If one olive grove is at sea level, then olives ripe first. Those that are inland ripe later. This way we can har­vest each of them on the right moment,” she adds.

Timor’s olive grove, a mix of young and older trees, is sur­rounded by woods and some groups of vio­lets sprin­kle the grass. As we walk along the ter­races, it looks big­ger than expected.
​“Half of it belongs to our cousin,” Orjana clar­i­fies while explain­ing that the plot is south­west ori­ented.

“This is the most com­mon ori­en­ta­tion in this region. It’s a way of pro­tect­ing the olive trees from low tem­per­a­tures and frost,” Orjana says.

The Slovenian coast in the Northern Adriatic is one of the north­ern­most olive oil-pro­duc­ing areas in the Mediterranean.

Here, olive trees can­not grow far from the coast. Only a few kilo­me­ters inland is too cold for them.

“Most of our olive trees are Istrian bel­ica, a typ­i­cal cul­ti­var from this region. It is resis­tant to frost and it pro­duces a lot of oil. It also has a lot of polyphe­nols which are very healthy.”

In one of the ter­races, among the olive trees, there is a small hut.

“Here is where we keep our oil,” Orjana tells.

Inside, there’s a cozy place with a full kitchen and a fire­place which looks more like a coun­try cot­tage than the stor­age, bot­tling and label­ing plant of an award-win­ning oil. It’s both things at the same time, though.

By the kitchen, there is a garage-like room where Timor’s annual pro­duc­tion of around 1,000 liters is stored.

Timotej han­dles with expert hands a pump the size of a ket­tle which he uses to fill the bot­tles with oil. Then he shows how he man­u­ally applies Timor’s brand labels, using a pur­pose-built desk to keep the bot­tle sta­ble.

“Like this, I can do around 100 bot­tles per hour,” he laughs.

Making a liv­ing just from olive oil is unusual in Slovenia and for many pro­duc­ers. It is rather a com­ple­ment to their ​“main jobs.” For oth­ers, it’s just a mat­ter of self-con­sump­tion. ​“Olive oil is our pas­sion, but it is not our pro­fes­sion. He is a lawyer and I am a gen­eral prac­ti­tioner,” Orjana says.

However, her fam­ily has pro­duced olive oil for gen­er­a­tions. Before World War II, they had their own mill, but it was aban­doned as many mem­bers of the fam­ily moved to cities in Slovenia and Italy. Then, by the mid-80s, her father started plant­ing new olive trees and recov­er­ing the old ones.

It is a job that Timotej con­tin­ued when he retired and moved back to his home­town and when, as he puts it, he fell in love with grow­ing olive trees.

Nowadays, Timor has around 800 olive trees. In 2018, they won a gold award for their organic medium blend at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

“It’s all changed a lot in recent years. Before we used to har­vest in November or later. Now, we fol­low the advice of the Institute for Oliveculture in Koper (a nearby town) and we har­vest ear­lier. Of course, the qual­ity of the oil is bet­ter now,” Orjana explains.