The Olives are bountiful this year! The harvest has started and it is a huge crop, free of fly! The quality of the oil should be good this year which is great for this region of France.
We have since found out that the lonesome tree in our garden is a ‘Picholine de Gard’ which is a true native of the region with it’s heritage in Collias, which is some short distance from here. Our tree gave us 8 Kgs of Olives which were plump and bursting with oil however this is not enough to have them pressed individually! They will have to be mixed with other olives to get the quantity up. We were hoping to have had a special ‘Rue de la Rochelle’ Olive Oil to bottle but the reality is that this cannot be from our single tree.
As we need more Olives we are gathering them from St Quentin La Poterie where good friends have two large trees in their garden. We estimate due to their stories of previous year’s quantities that this should give us enough for a mill to do only one set of Olives; thus a special Olive Oil nonetheless…The tree owners insist the quantity 2 years ago was 35 to 40 Kgs so we will see. 
Follow-up: We have returned with a lot less Olives than anticipated but the day was fun nonetheless. The picking began after a typically wonderful French lunch of starter, salad, grilled steak. The ‘apero’ was a light Champagne, the wine a fruity Rose…The picking was elegant as can be seen from the photo. We have about 32Kgs in total including our batch. Now we have some thinking to do!
Art of Oils 