In the hills above the small town of Relleu, Señorios de Relleu is a family farm dedicated to AOVE (Aceite de Oliva Virgen EXTRA) olive oil production. With only 15,000 trees, it is not the biggest operation in the area, nor even the most award-winning olive oil in Spain. But the production of three blended styles from mild to strong is first-class quality from an operation handed down by enthusiastic father, Eliseo Quintanilla Almagro, to willing son Hugo, who was proud to share his new season extra virgin olive oil with us.
With picture-perfect weather and an invitation from Raquel Perramon of OliveToLive, we joined an assemblage of other local chefs, restaurateurs, and food-minded friends to join in the annual harvest celebration.
The afternoon began with a short tour of the orchards to watch workers vigorously shaking trees with hydraulic rakes, releasing ripe olives that fell into nets spread wide around the trees.
Jorge watched with a little concern as the trees got jostled about, remembering when we carefully hand-picked every olive from our orchard, but he quickly got into the spirit of things and joined a few other guests to pluck some ripe olives from the trees.
As the morning wore on, the group amassed a fair amount of olives ready for processing. Careful sorting insured that only the best would make it into the mill.
When we returned to the mill house and the long luncheon table awaiting us, meal preparation was already underway.
To rehydrate from the walk, we began with an assortment of fresh-squeezed fruit and vegetable juices. My favorite: a blend of sandia (watermelon), orange melon and lime. Most guests brought along an amazing array of prepared tapas – from amazingly creamy canned white asparagus, roasted tangy piquillo peppers and giant sardines drenched in olive oil to cocas of roasted onions and a giant platter of grilled chorizo and thick-cut slices of fried tocino. Plate after plate appeared as more guests got into the action, unpacking their picnic baskets and filled the table with a great assortment of texture and taste.
Before the main meal, we took time to tour the olive mill housed in a restored 1918 farmhouse. Expecting a large-scale modern mill to match the scale of the farm, I was impressed at the size of the hand-operated, small-batch operation that managed to process fruit from so many trees. But from the quality of the fresh-squeezed olive oil we tasted that day, Hugo and the mill were more than capable of doing the job.
With the tiny town of Relleu stretching out before us and a boisterous hour of blending Spanish, French, and English with vino, cerveza, and tapas, we sat under the broad spread of trees to country-style paellas, salads picked fresh from their garden, and a wild assortment of desserts. The celebration finally wound down with a finishing touch of a fresh horchata drink accompanied by a small shot of Ruavieja Licor de Hierbas, an interloping taste from the northern province of Galicia.
There may be many ways to celebrate the new olive oil season in Spain, but this day ranks among the nicest we’ve ever experienced and were grateful to have been invited to join in.
