Serra da Mantiqueira: Brazil’s Pioneer Extra Virgin Olive Oil Region

Summary

Minas Gerais, a state in south­east­ern Brazil, was once enriched by a gold rush that lasted from the Portuguese colo­nial period through Brazil’s inde­pen­dence, lead­ing to the cre­ation of opu­lent his­toric cities like Ouro Preto. In recent years, the region has shifted its focus to olive oil pro­duc­tion, with Serra da Mantiqueira now home to over 15 arti­sanal brands and an annual pro­duc­tion of 25,000 liters, mak­ing it a grow­ing epi­cen­ter of Brazil’s olive oil indus­try.

Minas Gerais, a state in south­east­ern Brazil, once expe­ri­enced an impetu­ous gold rush that lasted from the Portuguese colo­nial period until well after Brazil had gained its inde­pen­dence.

Although the exchange of power was shrouded in con­tra­dic­tions, the extrac­tion of gold con­tin­ued to enrich the newly formed con­sti­tu­tional monar­chy and add opu­lence to his­toric cities such as Ouro Preto, Congonhas, and São João del-Rei.

Numerous churches exhibit­ing baroque styles unique to the region were designed and, often­times, sculpted by a crip­pled archi­tect known as Aleijadinho (Antônio Francisco Lisboa). Although the churches still stand today, such as Igreja de São Francisco de Assis de Ouro Preto and Santuário do Bom Jesus de Matosinhos, Minas Gerais, the gold rush days are a thing of the past.

Nowadays, tucked away in the small south­ern town of Andradas, a hand­ful of olive grow­ers have con­gre­gated in Serra da Mantiqueira to extract Brazil’s new­found liq­uid gold — extra vir­gin olive oil.

In the 1950s Brazil’s olive cul­ti­va­tion took root, not in Serra da Mantqueira but in rural areas sur­round­ing the cities of Campos do Jordão (São Paulo) and Uruguaiana (Rio Grande do Sul). The project resulted in noth­ing more than an over­growth of weeds and dry bush. Minas Gerais Agricultural Research Firm (EPAMIG) retrieved the last remain­ing olive seeds and con­ducted research to iden­tify an ade­quate locale to cul­ti­vate the olives. Serra da Mantiqueira was selected.

A cou­ple of years before the turn of the cen­tury, a hand­ful of farm­ers cleared fields and planted small areas of olive trees. The results were impres­sive and Serra da Mantiqueira became Brazil’s new olive oil region.

Serra da Mantiqueira holds a mod­est 8,000 olive trees along its land­scape of cas­cad­ing hills. It’s only the region’s fifth com­mer­cial har­vest of extra vir­gin olive oil, a local prod­uct that can nev­er­the­less out-com­pete large, imported brands for its prompt deliv­ery to mar­ket and fresh­ness.

Small, yet pre­cise, extrac­tion machines imported from Italy per­form the task of con­vert­ing freshly picked olives to extra vir­gin liq­uid gold. ​“This year we learned how to really tweak the machine and pro­duc­tiv­ity increased a lot. This helped to com­pen­sate for the dif­fi­cul­ties of this year’s har­vest which was greatly impaired by the excess of rain and a much hot­ter win­ter,” explained Carla Retuci, pro­ducer of Borriello Olive Oil.

Currently, more than 15 arti­sanal extra vir­gin olive oil brands are pro­duced in Serra da Mantiqueira with the help of tech­nol­ogy devel­oped by Empresa de Pesquisa Agropecuária de Minas Gerais (EPAMIG).

Seven years after the first test of olive oil extrac­tion in the region, roughly 25,000 liters of olive oil is now being pro­duced annu­ally, mak­ing Serra da Mantiqueira a small but grow­ing epi­cen­ter of Brazil’s bur­geon­ing olive oil indus­try.

• Frente da Gastronomia Mineira


• Sistema FAEMG