At Domaine de Gerbaud, Native Provençal Cultivars Shape an Award-Winning Blend

Summary

Domaine de Gerbaud, an organic olive oil pro­ducer in Provence, won a Silver Award at the 2026 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition for their high-qual­ity olive oils made from native cul­ti­vars like Aglandau and Grossane. The estate focuses on blend­ing dif­fer­ent vari­eties to high­light the unique char­ac­ter of Provençal olive oil, with a team of experts advis­ing on all aspects of pro­duc­tion, but strug­gles with the eco­nomic chal­lenges of organic farm­ing, labor costs, and cli­mate change.

A Silver Award was secured at the 2026 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition by an organic pro­ducer in Provence focused on high­light­ing the dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter of the region’s native olive cul­ti­vars.

Aglandau, Salonenque, Grossane and Bouteillan are the only olives cul­ti­vated by Domaine de Gerbaud, an estate at the foothills of the Grand Luberon moun­tain range. There, a hilly, well-drained land­scape of slopes, ven­ti­la­tion and cal­care­ous soils helps shape some of France’s high­est-qual­ity olive oils.

“We par­tic­i­pate in a few com­pe­ti­tions every year, but the NYIOOC holds a spe­cial place as this is where we were awarded our first Gold Medal some years ago,” Louisa Sherman, owner of the estate, told Olive Oil Times. ​“The NYIOOC is a top-rated com­pe­ti­tion and win­ning a medal is a pres­ti­gious achieve­ment.”

The pro­ducer does not cur­rently have a sta­ble pres­ence in the U.S. mar­ket. ​“We have no out­lets in America and the few American online clients stopped buy­ing after the intro­duc­tion of tar­iffs,” Sherman said. Still, she described recog­ni­tion in New York as an impor­tant bench­mark.

“Winning a medal is an excel­lent indi­ca­tor for us as to where our olive oil is posi­tioned,” she said. ​“We appre­ci­ate the wide range of con­tes­tants from across the world and being judged in their fine com­pany.”

In France, how­ever, the impact is more direct. Sherman said awards help rein­force cred­i­bil­ity and sup­port domes­tic sales.

At the cen­ter of Domaine de Gerbaud’s approach is blend­ing. ​“I see blend­ing as pure alchemy,” she said. ​“It is a bal­ance between the sci­en­tific stan­dards of extra vir­gin olive oil, years of knowl­edge and insight into the tastes of each indi­vid­ual vari­ety and, cru­cially, the way dif­fer­ent batches inter­act once blended in spe­cific pro­por­tions.”

The goal, she said, is to high­light the nuances of Provençal olive oil and intro­duce it to a wider audi­ence. ​“The pun­gency of Aglandau in con­trast to the sweeter Salonenque and the decep­tive soft­ness of Grossane,” Sherman said. ​“Yet, in dif­fer­ent pro­por­tions, they con­jure blends of remark­able unique­ness.”

According to Sherman, blend­ing begins in the grove. The estate har­vests by vari­ety and by par­cel, often at dif­fer­ent points in the sea­son, fol­low­ing the nat­ural tim­ing of each cul­ti­var to build a broader palette of oils for blend­ing.

“This gives us a greater selec­tion of olive oil batches from which to blend a nuanced olive oil,” she said.

A sig­nif­i­cant part of Domaine de Gerbaud’s iden­tity is rooted in the long his­tory of olive grow­ing in Provence. ​“The land­scape is an ancient one, with human set­tle­ment in this area dat­ing back to Neolithic times,” Sherman said. ​“Our for­ti­fied farm­house is about 500 years old. We under­stand that our pres­ence is fleet­ing and we are mind­ful cura­tors of the ter­roir, the water resources and plants we grow.”

Despite those deep his­tor­i­cal roots, the estate’s cur­rent chap­ter is rel­a­tively recent. Sherman and her fam­ily moved to Provence from South Africa with a long agri­cul­tural back­ground, ini­tially envi­sion­ing a smaller project.

What began mod­estly soon expanded into a more com­plex agri­cul­tural under­tak­ing. Part of that com­plex­ity came from fol­low­ing organic olive oil pro­duc­tion pro­to­cols, a grow­ing trend among French pro­duc­ers, with roughly one-third to nearly half of the country’s olive area under organic man­age­ment.

“After attend­ing the Olive Oil Times Sommelier Program, we decided that our only recourse to make sense of olive oil pro­duc­tion with a small num­ber of trees, 1,200, which has since grown to 1,400, would be to aim for pre­mium qual­ity olive oil pro­duc­tion,” Sherman said.

“We soon real­ized that if we were to pro­duce out­stand­ing olive oil, we’d need input from pro­fes­sion­als,” she added. ​“We have gath­ered an excel­lent team to advise us on tree nutri­tion, pest pro­tec­tion, prun­ing, har­vest­ing and blend­ing.”

“Our team com­bines Spanish and French exper­tise, as well as the lat­est sci­en­tific evi­dence,” Sherman said. ​“Our experts have by now built up a mem­ory of knowl­edge of our ter­rain and trees. They are nim­ble in adjust­ing to chang­ing grow­ing con­di­tions and pest threats.”

Today, the estate cul­ti­vates the vari­eties at the core of the AOP Provence des­ig­na­tion. In addi­tion to the Aglandau, Salonenque and Grossane trees already grow­ing on the estate, the pro­ducer added Bouteillan trees.

“We also increased the num­ber of Aglandau trees as this vari­ety is con­sid­ered the king of olives in Provence,” Sherman said. According to the pro­ducer, Aglandau plays a par­tic­u­larly impor­tant role by con­tribut­ing to the phe­no­lic con­tent, sta­bil­ity, and the intense fin­ish of the estate’s oils.

Terroir also plays a cen­tral role. ​“The loca­tion of our olive groves is all on steep ter­rain that ensures good drainage and excel­lent ven­ti­la­tion that allow olive trees to thrive,” Sherman said.

“One aspect of inno­va­tion that we have intro­duced is sci­en­tific test­ing of the soil, the leaves and the ripeness of olives before har­vest­ing,” she added. ​“Testing the soil and leaves for cor­rect nutri­tion dur­ing the grow­ing sea­son and mak­ing the nec­es­sary adjust­ments, and test­ing the olives for opti­mum ripeness before the har­vest plan is devised.”

This inte­gra­tion of sci­en­tific mon­i­tor­ing with tra­di­tional knowl­edge reflects a broader effort to align pre­ci­sion agri­cul­ture with the con­straints of organic cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. ​“There are severe lim­i­ta­tions on the pro­tec­tions one can use to safe­guard the olives from dis­eases,” Sherman said. ​“Organic farm­ing requires inten­sive labor, and in France agri­cul­tural labor is expen­sive and in short sup­ply.”

The eco­nomic impli­ca­tions are sig­nif­i­cant. Seasonal work­ers, par­tic­u­larly for prun­ing and har­vest­ing, rep­re­sent a sub­stan­tial cost and often limit prof­itabil­ity. ​“Foreign labor par­tially solves the demand, but the costs of peri­patetic pruners and har­vesters limit prof­itabil­ity,” Sherman said. ​“So, this is a true labor of love.”

Climate change has added fur­ther com­plex­ity. ​“We increas­ingly suf­fer drought and for the pre­vi­ous five years recur­rent heat­waves dur­ing spring and sum­mer scorched the earth and trees,” Sherman said.

Adaptation has required invest­ment in irri­ga­tion infra­struc­ture. ​“The con­nec­tion to the Canal de Provence water sys­tem three years ago has enabled us to keep the olive trees well-watered at cru­cial peri­ods of the grow­ing sea­son,” she said.

Still, the grow­ing sea­son remains uncer­tain, par­tic­u­larly dur­ing its ear­li­est stages. ​“We are head­ing towards spring now, and the first del­i­cate and vul­ner­a­ble stage of olive pro­duc­tion for the year — blos­som­ing and the all-impor­tant fruit-form­ing there­after,” Sherman said. ​“This is the most nerve-rack­ing phase of the pro­duc­tion year. Rains and frost are seri­ous threats.”

“We have man­aged to pro­duce ever health­ier olives each year, and this is a great source of pride to every­one,” she added. ​“I can­not wait to har­vest the first batch of Bouteillan olives as this will offer a chance to exper­i­ment with an olive oil lot that has a potent volatil­ity.”