Quality and Tradition at Valpaços

The coun­try­side around Valpaços is one of gen­tly rolling hills with alter­nat­ing patches of pine forests, cork oaks, olives, almonds and figs. This is the quin­tes­sen­tial land­scape of Trás-os-Montes, a mainly rural region in the inte­rior of Northwest Portugal which is the sec­ond-largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region of the coun­try, only after Alentejo.

José Ventura, direc­tor gen­eral of the olive grow­ers’ coop­er­a­tive of Valpaços, showed an Olive Oil Times reporter the olive groves sur­round­ing the vil­lage.

Ventura has been work­ing in this coop­er­a­tive, one of the largest in Portugal, for over 25 years.

“I started almost out of neces­sity. My par­ents didn’t have the means for me to study, so I worked for the coop­er­a­tive and stud­ied at the same time”, he said, as he drove to Fonte Merce, one of the lit­tle vil­lages tak­ing their olives to the coop­er­a­tive.

​“Once I entered the world of olive oil, I became pas­sion­ate about it.”

The Valpaços coop­er­a­tive was founded in 1952 with just 28 mem­bers.

Now, almost seven decades later, it has over 2,200 asso­ciates from the town of Valpaços and neigh­bor­ing Mirandela and pro­duces over 2 mil­lion liters of oil each year.

Despite those big fig­ures, the coop­er­a­tive has man­aged to com­bine high-qual­ity pro­duc­tion, becom­ing one of the most renowned Portuguese pro­duc­ers.

This year they won two Gold Awards and two Silver Awards at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, the most recent recog­ni­tion that added to sev­eral prizes obtained in pre­vi­ous edi­tions of the con­test.

Producing high-qual­ity olive oil has no secrets, Ventura pointed out. But har­vest­ing at the right moment, when the fruit is at the right stage of ripen­ing, is key.

It may seem easy. However, bring­ing together such a large coop­er­a­tive to this point has not been a straight­for­ward task.

“There was a resis­tance among some mem­bers to har­vest olives at early stages as they thought that har­vest­ing later, when they are ripe, would increase their per­for­mance,” he recalled.

In order to change people’s minds about the right moment to har­vest and improve qual­ity, the coop­er­a­tive pio­neered a mea­sure in Portugal some 15 years ago: ​“We put in place a sys­tem of rewards for those asso­ci­ated farm­ers who har­vest at the begin­ning of the sea­son. Those who har­vest early, get a bonus of 80 cents per kilo,” Ventura explained. ​“The num­ber of peo­ple join­ing to the early har­vest steadily increased.”

Portugal, with a pro­duc­tion of 132,000 tons of olive oil last year, is the sev­enth largest pro­ducer after Spain, Italy, Greece, Tunis, Turkey and Morocco, accord­ing to data from the International Olive Oil Council.

Valpaços, a town with a pop­u­la­tion of about 16,000, is at the hinge between the Terras Quentes (hot lands) and the Terras Frias (cold lands) of Trás-os-Montes. ​“From here to the South, olive trees and other fruit trees are grown. To the North, there are some fruit trees as well, but they mainly grow chest­nuts.” Ventura explains.

Unlike other olive oil-pro­duc­ing regions in Portugal, where inten­sive irri­gated olive groves have been planted in recent years, most of the farms in this area are still tra­di­tional ones, keep­ing a dis­tance of six meters between every tree.

“Being able to pre­serve and main­tain tra­di­tional, non-irri­gated olive groves is key to mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in terms of qual­ity. This, and our local cul­ti­vars, are the key fea­tures that give our olive oil its spe­cial taste,” Ventura said, show­ing how cen­turies-old olive trees mix with recently planted ones.

As in the rest of the Trás-os-Montes region, Cobrançosa, Madural and Verdeal Transmontana are the main cul­ti­vars grown in Valpaços.

“We keep doing the new plan­ta­tions the same way they used to be done five cen­turies ago,” Ventura said.

“In inten­sive olive groves, costs are small com­pared to here. Although some of the har­vest is done with mechan­i­cal means, large parts of it are still done man­u­ally and costs are higher. We seek qual­ity. We can never com­pete in terms of quan­tity with other regions.”

“So we need to pre­serve the tra­di­tional non-irri­gated olive groves. That is my call and my pas­sion.”