Les Olives: Part Four

A History Lesson on Olives and Thomas Jefferson

In high school, I had a bit of a man crush on Thomas Jefferson. He wrote one of the most subversive and eloquent fuck-yous to oppression. He designed his own home and many innovative gadgets. He enjoyed life in Paris during the Age of Enlightenment. He was an intellectual, an inventor, a gentleman farmer. 

Years later, I now appreciate that Thomas wasn’t doing much of the farming, if you get my drift. He espoused freedom for all, while owning human beings. And it seems he was a bit self conscious of the contradiction, designing his home, Monticello, to hide more than 400 slaves in bunker-like basements while relying on them to pay his bills. Not very gentlemanly, if I think about it now.

But I still admire Jefferson’ wanderlust. He was a seasoned traveler of Europe, and France was especially dear to him. Jefferson once said of Paris, “A walk about [the city] will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of life.” I can’t think of a better way to spend a Sunday morning than a brisk walk–scarf around my neck–through the Jardin de Luxembourg, out to the Île de la Cité for a view of the Seine, and then a stroll down Saint-Germain-des-Prés for a pain au chocolat and a café. C'est magnifique!

While in Paris, Jefferson experienced another life truth, “one of the most precious productions of nature.” It appears he was served some olive oil, maybe on a salade composée in a streetside bistro, and instantly fell in love with the “liquid gold.”  In fact, he was so smitten, that he called olive oil “the richest gift of heaven,” and a “necessity of life” right up there with his other two favorite lifestyle drugs: wine and books.

For the next several months, Jefferson wrote back home to friends and business associates of the “most interesting plant in existence.” He even believed that the olive had the potential to change America’s economy, health, and culture. He would spend decades trying to cultivate olive trees in Virginia, with limited success. And for the rest of his life, four gallons of French oil appeared on the doorstep of Monticello every spring. 

I only learned yesterday that Jefferson took a three month tour of Southern France in 1787. He arrived in Aix-en-Provence, not far from my aunt’s place, on March 27, just a couple weeks from now. Maybe he got to witness farmers pruning his “richest gift of heaven.” 

I’m not surprised Jefferson was enamored with the olive. It’s a bit of an icon of the Mediterranean. In Provence, it could even be called the agricultural mascot, right up there with purple lavender and pink wine. And for good reason. Olives have been part of Mediterranean history since before folks were recording it.

The Phoenicians may have brought the olive to France from West Asia way back in the early Bronze Age, although fossil records of olive leaves exist as early as 8,000 BCE up and down the coast. Wide scale cultivation started during Greek times in and around Marseilles—then known as Massalia—the oldest city in France, and its only deepwater port.   

Olive oil was the petroleum of the ancient world, used for lamp fuel, soap, cosmetics, and lubricants. Shoot, people even bathed with the stuff. And it had the added benefit of tasting a whole lot better than sweet crude.

Today, most of the oil produced in Europe comes from Spain; more than half actually! A handful of other countries produce the rest: Italy, Greece, Portugal. France isn’t even on that list because it produces just 5,000 tons, less than 1% of what Spain makes. In fact, some individual farms in other countries produce more than all of France.

The tree itself is well suited for the Mediterranean climate. Rugged and efficient, it can grow in the most arid of soils without much fuss. Individual trees can live for hundreds, if not thousands of years. As a result, the oil tree has remained an important part of the Mediterranean economy for more than three thousand years.

But olive trees do have a kryptonite. When air temperatures drop below freezing, frost can kill them. Provence knows this fact all too well. The Great Frost of 1956 wiped out at least two thirds of the groves across the region. Many more were torn up and converted to lavender, or wheat, or expat vacation homes. Some say France’s olive oil production never fully recovered. 

There was a latent benefit to this apocalyptic winter. Because there are so few trees left in France, farmers have had to choose quality over quantity if they want to stay in business. The small number of producers also means the olives can be picked by hand at just the right time. Because French trees are relatively young, the oil is also low in acidity, and remarkably aromatic. Like most things coming out of this country, French olive oil is of an impeccable quality that makes it some of the most sought after in the world.

My aunt’s grove is even younger than most. The trees–the regionally popular aglandau varietal–date back to the 1970s and 80s when she bought the place. Most of her olives are evenly spaced along a terraced slope of about four acres that faces south just below her home. This makes up about 90 of her trees. The other forty or so trees are scattered around the property, some decorative, some convenient, some opportunists that just popped up all on their own. In total, there are about 130. 

My aunt prunes half of her trees each March, although you could start as early as January. Like apples and many other fruit trees, olives have a biennial bearing. This means they alternate producing fruit and foliage each year. Some years, the tree will be choked with olives. Other years, it grows bushy and thick with new leaves and shoots, running out of energy for fruit. This can result in unmaintained trees only producing olives for half of their lives, especially in drier years. So, pruning fifty percent of the trees each Spring, smooths out the boom and bust nature, and ensures a consistent flow of oil at harvest.

The secret, I’m told, to good olive oil production is sunlight. Each olive should get as much direct sun as possible. This is difficult for a tree that often turns into an impenetrable bush when left to its own nature. So the pruning is essential for cutting back much of the annual growth, hollowing out smaller branches and leaves, so that only a handful of main branches remain. 

When finished, the trees look more like an upheld palm with five or six fingers splayed out horizontally. The French say a bird should be able to fly right through the center of a well pruned olive tree. The Italians say you should be able to see a naked woman between branches. An American friend mentioned throwing a cat through the canopy as a final test. I assume he was a dog lover. 

The result is that each tree is barely six feet high, and about twice as wide. This shorter, stockier stance is easy to pick (again, by hand), uses less energy to grow wood and leaves, and conversely, saves its sap for producing fruit. 

I also have a theory that the locals like how these trees look aesthetically. Olives are evergreen, and when the rest of the countryside is leaf-bare and bleak, the olive offers splashes of green growth and chocolatey brown bark to jazz up the countryside. When the breathtaking Provençal sunrise hits the tree tops, the leaves turn chartreuse and lime. New shoots glow pistachio. As the morning sun climbs, the hues darken to khaki, forest, and artichoke. In a soft breeze, the leaves reveal their matte gray undersides, appearing to shimmer as if gilded in silver. It’s pretty enough to paint, and many of the greats knew this well before I noticed. There are dozens of famous Impressionist canvases with the olive tree front and center.

Personally, I find the branches and trunks to be the tree’s most expressive features. Some start as a single short, squat trunk that can grow to several meters in circumference. One such tree in the Azores is more than 22 feet around. These battered and gnarled hulks look like cadaverous forearms, complete with varicose veins, carbuncles and scars. The branches sprout like arthritic fingers full of knobs and warts from a tortured, unirrigated, windswept life. 

Many of my aunt’s trees are actually made up of several thinner trunks sprouting out of the ground from an old stump lost to frost or age. These trees look lighter and more open, like mythical arboreal snakes twisting and turning towards the sun until their heads sprout with a canopy of chloron shoots and leaves.

All this drama makes for beautiful lumber, and my kitchen is littered with way too many stunning examples. Cheese plates, charcuterie boards, serving platters, wooden spoons, all play with the dramatic dancing woodgrains and rich colors. A great souvenir if you come to visit.

Only in April, when the tree’s understated green flowers appear, do folks stop pruning. Eventually, the flowers turn into fruit, and ripen through the summer months to a darker green or brown, but never black. Harvested by hand in October and November with canvas sheets and the rake-like râteau, the olives are crated and carried to the local moulin or mill, where they are lightly ground and cold pressed.

The resulting oil is fruity, almost sweet, with aromas of almond, prune, and even pineapple. Because of its low acidity, the oil has a smooth, lingering taste. There is no pepper or spicy bite common to oils from California and Spain. My aunt’s moulin doesn’t filter the oil, a regional preference that locals claim improves the aroma and preserves health-benefiting polyphenols. Most producers filter what you buy in the store to extend shelf life. But since my aunt’s trees produce anywhere from 30 to 100 liters, she has no problem using all of it in one season, or giving the remainder to friends and family who help with the harvest. She always runs out before the next harvest. 

Wrapping up my work on the apricot tree from this morning, I realized I had my biggest job ahead of me. Standing proudly in front of me was my last pruning lesson before lunch; olea europaea, the common European olive.  

The tree had leaves and shoots springing from everywhere, even the base of the trunk. Huge pendulous bushels of leaves and stems hanged down to the ground. I couldn’t see the middle of the tree, much less a bird, a naked lady, or a cat. And there were dozens of shoots growing straight up making the tree easily 15 feet tall. I was going to need a ladder.

“My mother gave me that olive tree,” my aunt explained. 

With horror, I realize that the first olive tree I would practice my pruning on, would not only be within conspicuous distance of my aunt’s kitchen window, so that every time she rinsed a dish or made a cup of tea, she would be able to scrutinize my efforts, but that it was also a family heirloom of historic importance. 

My confidence melted into a puddle. I considered feigning hunger, or a stomach ache to pause the lesson. Maybe I could run back to my room and watch a few more pruning videos on YouTube. Anything to prevent me from hideously defacing this vestige of my aunt’s ancestral history. 

But before I could muster the excuse, she simply pointed with her stick, and asked me to begin.

I took a deep breath and remembered a saying attributed to my man crush, Thomas Jefferson. 

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." 

Little did I realize how lucky I would become thanks to all the hard work ahead.