`Carol Drinkwater: Following 'The Olive Oil Route' with Passion - Olive Oil Times

Carol Drinkwater: Following 'The Olive Oil Route' with Passion

By Alice Alech
Nov. 12, 2012 11:10 UTC

Actress Carol Drinkwater stum­bled upon her pas­sion for olives, and once dis­cov­ered there was no stop­ping.

The British artist has worked in film, tele­vi­sion and the­ater and is best known for her award-win­ning por­trayal of Helen Herriot in the BBC series All Creatures Great and Small. Straight out of drama school Drinkwater took on a part in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.

When she bought her 10-acre prop­erty in 1986, the villa was run­down and the aban­doned land was vastly over­grown but while clear­ing it two years later she dis­cov­ered sixty-eight, four-hun­dred-year-old trees grow­ing on the hill­side among the dry stoned wall ter­races.

Captivated, she boldly embarked on an olive adven­ture in the South of France and she faced head-on the chal­lenges, tri­als and tribu­la­tions of learn­ing the com­plex busi­ness of grow­ing olives and pro­duc­ing olive oil.

Her aim was to pro­duce the best olive oil pos­si­ble. But this olive oil expert is an actress at heart, an artist eager to learn and to share her knowl­edge and pas­sion. Today she is work­ing on a film doc­u­men­tary series enti­tled The Olive Route.

Drinkwater said that all started with ques­tions: Where did the olive trees first come from? Is there an olive route?

I set up a meet­ing with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris, with the cul­tural direc­tor, and pro­posed myself for the role of seeker of the ancient jour­neys, she who will find answers.’ I wanted to unearth this tree’s his­tory. I had made up my mind that I would go in search of the plant’s mys­ter­ies, its ancient her­itage and track some of its orig­i­nal routes from wild tree to cul­ti­va­tion.”

Driven by her love of olives, she set off on a his­tor­i­cal jour­ney which took her in search of the routes that olive cul­ti­va­tion has taken over the years, meet­ing and shar­ing her pas­sion: peo­ple like Salah, the guardian of the olive tree in a vil­lage near Bethlehem, two olive groves in Lebanon more than 6,000 years old and still pro­duc­ing fruit, and the remark­able dis­cov­ery that the old­est olive trees are in Mount Lebanon.

The olive route stretches from Northern Syria to Gibraltar, some of it cov­er­ing dan­ger­ous ter­rain. She found her­self some­times in war zones, she wore a burka when she had to, her back­pack weighted down with a cam­era and lap­top.

Drinkwater spent six­teen months trav­el­ling solo around the Mediterranean to Spain, Morocco, Algeria and Italy gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion for her lat­est books, The Olive Route and The Olive Tree.

She and her hus­band, the French TV pro­ducer Michel Noll, are now prepar­ing the ten-part doc­u­men­tary film series set around the Mediterranean. I am work­ing on the nar­ra­tion of the films which will go out soon to the dif­fer­ent net­works,” she said.

The first film of the series called The Holy Land and the Olive Tree is set in Jerusalem and the West Bank fea­tur­ing a 5,000 year-old tree.

Before my 18 months of travel, I spent 6 years mak­ing con­tacts. When I got there I just went with the flow. I met peo­ple who led me to other peo­ple; the net­work of con­tacts was phe­nom­e­nal,” she said. She added that International Olive Council Director Jean-Louis Barjol was very help­ful when they met in Madrid.

Carol Drinkwater is a best­selling author of 6 mem­oirs shar­ing her pas­sion for olives and olive oil and the effect it had on her life, start­ing from the time she first acquired her olive grove.



Advertisement
Advertisement

Related Articles