Our Rarest Olive Oil Variety: Hacienda Queiles from Navarra, Spain
We are proud to introduce our newest and rarest olive oil variety: Hacienda Queiles from Navarra, Spain!
Our olive oils are not like those countless brands sold in retail stores and on other websites.
Our oils are exclusively sourced from Steve Jenkins' Olive Oil Jones. Steve imports huge barrels of living, breathing, geographically specific olive oils that are fresh, exuberant and billowing with fragrance and flavor. All of their olive oils are unfiltered and strictly EARLY-HARVEST olive oils, derived from olives that were green, and gently harvested then mulched and centrifuged within hours of their harvest. Our customers can immediately smell and taste the difference.
Our newest oil, Hacienda Queiles, is a monocultivar made from 100% arroniz olives, a local variety from Navarra, Spain. The olive oil from Hacienda Queiles is certified organic. The taste ripples with ripe fruit, a sweetness and a huge elegant boldness. This is a big and lovely oil.
Hacienda Queiles has been making olive oil in Navarra, Spain, in the middle of the Queiles River Valley for 25 years. The Spanish Association of Olive Municipalities (AEMO) awarded Hacienda Queiles The Best Mill Of Spain.
The Queiles Valley has been known since time immemorial for producing grains, wines and olive oil. Hacienda Queiles (pronounced kay-EE-lace) is uniquely located between the snows of Moncayo and the arid desert of the biosphere reserve called the Bardenas Reales. This is a land of extreme temperatures and rocky soil, with little capacity for water retention. It gives the fruit of the olive trees a distinct personality. Throughout history from the Romans and the Arabs, the olive has always been linked to the 3 Cistercian Abbeys from the 12th and 13th centuries.
Hacienda Queiles has their state-of-the-art mill located within their groves, which occupy about 60 hectares (over 148 acres) of mainly Arbequina and Arroniz olive trees. The early harvest olives are milled right there, keeping them in perfect condition. The Hacienda has a philosophy of “Pago de Olivar”; having full control of the whole process from the tree to the harvest to the mill.
99% of all olive oil consumers in the world know nothing but ‘sweet’ olive oil. Unless an olive oil has that early-harvest spiciness and a slight bitterness, it is an oil that cannot provide the immense flavor boost, cannot amplify flavors in the ingredients it has been combined with, to be cooked or dressed with. That’s the truth. Olive oils from ripe olives do nothing for food except make it smell like olives. It lies upon food like a side of lox, serving merely to grease things up.
Add to that the fact that late-harvest olive oils from ripe olives have none of the immense health benefits for which olive oil is given so much adulation, credit, validation and study; the polyphenols are gone.