Acclaimed Producer Prepares for Fruitful Harvest in Tunisia

Summary

Michaël Zeitoun, owner of Parcelle 26 by HDMP, antic­i­pates a promis­ing olive har­vest sea­son in Zaghouan, Tunisia, with a focus on pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity olive oil. The fam­ily busi­ness, estab­lished after Zeitoun’s father planted the orchards, has won numer­ous awards for its extra vir­gin olive oils due to metic­u­lous prac­tices and a blend of mod­ern and tra­di­tional tech­niques. Despite chal­lenges like weather fluc­tu­a­tions and con­sumer aware­ness, Zeitoun plans to expand the prod­uct line in the future.

The olive har­vest in the north­ern Tunisian region of Zaghouan is under­way.

“We antic­i­pate a promis­ing sea­son with at least an aver­age yield and excel­lent qual­ity olives,” said Michaël Zeitoun, owner of the award-win­ning French brand Parcelle 26 by HDMP.

In early October, around 90 work­ers will fan out across Zeitoun’s 50-hectare farm, reviv­ing an ancient tra­di­tion that dates back 2,500 years to the Phoenicians and Romans’ first intro­duc­tion of olives to the region.

“I’ll be there along­side our work­ers. It’s a metic­u­lous process, with olives hand­picked and metic­u­lously selected,” Zeitoun shared. ​“We have five spe­cial­ized full-time employ­ees at the farm, sup­ported by four addi­tional work­ers. Being on-site allows us to mon­i­tor the har­vest closely as it pro­gresses.”

“My wife man­ages the brand and dis­tri­b­u­tion aspects. This is truly a fam­ily busi­ness,” he added. ​“But this wasn’t part of our orig­i­nal plan.”

The orchards were planted in 2006 and 2007 by Zeitoun’s father.

“At 86, after bat­tling a long ill­ness, my father returned to his home­land to plant olives,” Zeitoun said. ​“He came from an olive farm­ing back­ground but had left the coun­try as a young man around the time of Tunisia’s inde­pen­dence.”

Tunisia gained inde­pen­dence from French rule in 1956.

“I wasn’t ini­tially inter­ested in the project since I already had, and still have, my real estate busi­ness in France,” Zeitoun said. ​“At that time, I knew noth­ing about agri­cul­ture or olive cul­ti­va­tion. I barely even knew the loca­tion of the farm.”

Zeitoun’s olive-grow­ing her­itage grew increas­ingly mean­ing­ful for him and his fam­ily as the years passed. Eventually, the orchards became a fully-fledged fam­ily busi­ness, and Zeitoun fre­quently trav­eled between Paris and Zaghouan.

“After three years of hard work, in 2018, we offi­cially estab­lished our brand and extracted olive oil for the first time,” Zeitoun said.

“My father didn’t live to see that achieve­ment; he passed away just a month before,” he added. ​“That’s when we decided to enter the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.”

In 2019, Parcelle 26 earned Gold and Silver Awards for its line of prod­ucts, which included three dis­tinct extra vir­gin olive oils made from Arbequina olives.

Since then, these extra vir­gin olive oils have won numer­ous addi­tional awards, includ­ing a Gold and two Silver Awards at the 2024 NYIOOC.

“We were for­tu­nate with Arbequina; my father planted those trees back then, and they proved to be the ideal choice for our farm,” Zeitoun said.

He cred­its the qual­ity of his olive oil to a com­pre­hen­sive set of prac­tices, from hand­pick­ing and select­ing olives to man­ag­ing a ded­i­cated olive oil mill on the farm.

“There’s no secret for­mula or spe­cial trick. Our holis­tic approach to olive grow­ing results in our high-qual­ity olive oil,” he said. ​“For instance, we select trees that pro­duce the best fruits, which our spe­cial­ists then re-exam­ine dur­ing har­vest. Once the olives arrive at the mill, typ­i­cally within two to four hours after being picked, they undergo a final selec­tion.”

“Another key prac­tice is main­tain­ing low tem­per­a­tures through­out the extrac­tion process,” Zeitoun added. ​“We employ very cold extrac­tion, keep­ing tem­per­a­tures between 17 ºC and 20 ºC.”

“Additionally, Parcelle 26 stores its olive oil at a con­sis­tent 18 ºC through­out the year in nitro­gen-pres­sur­ized, oxy­gen-free steel tanks,” he con­tin­ued. ​“This ensures that our olive oil remains fresh and high-qual­ity when bot­tled for our cus­tomers. By the end of the sea­son, our extra vir­gin olive oil’s acid­ity never exceeds 0.3 per­cent, or 0.35 per­cent at the most.”

Free acid­ity is a cru­cial para­me­ter in eval­u­at­ing olive oil grades. It typ­i­cally increases over time in stored olive oil. To qual­ify as extra vir­gin, olive oil must have an acid­ity below 0.8 per­cent.

“As an olive oil mill, we don’t pur­chase olives from exter­nal sources because we can’t fully ensure how they were grown and han­dled,” Zeitoun said.

His trees are planted in fully irri­gated inten­sive (high-den­sity) groves, although water avail­abil­ity is often highly restricted.

“However, we also main­tain some tra­di­tional groves and prac­tices, blend­ing mod­ern agri­cul­tural tech­niques with a tra­di­tional vision,” Zeitoun said, ref­er­enc­ing the few hectares ded­i­cated to Arbosana and Koroneiki olive trees.

“While we don’t have organic cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, all of our prac­tices align with those prin­ci­ples,” he added.

Like else­where, weather fluc­tu­a­tions can sig­nif­i­cantly affect olive oil pro­duc­tion.

“Last year was par­tic­u­larly chal­leng­ing due to extreme heat and drought con­di­tions,” Zeitoun said. ​“We faced trees with olives at vary­ing stages of ripeness, from green to fully mature, which made the selec­tion process time-con­sum­ing and labor-inten­sive.”

“Climate change is the top chal­lenge for high-qual­ity pro­duc­ers,” he empha­sized.

Zeitoun also high­lighted the chal­lenge of increas­ing con­sumer aware­ness about olive oil’s sen­sory qual­i­ties and health ben­e­fits.

“We cater to two dis­tinct cus­tomer seg­ments: retail con­sumers and pro­fes­sion­als. The aver­age con­sumer is just begin­ning to appre­ci­ate the value of extra vir­gin olive oil,” Zeitoun said. ​“Professional buy­ers can dis­cern qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil, and it’s grat­i­fy­ing to see them enjoy ours.”

“It’s a dif­fer­ent story with the aver­age con­sumer, who often doesn’t know what to look for in olive oil,” he added. ​“Many con­sumers are accus­tomed to stan­dard olive oils and can be puz­zled by the fla­vors and nuances of qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil.”

The com­pany plans to expand its prod­uct line by intro­duc­ing new olive oils in the com­ing years.

“We have many ideas in the pipeline, and we’re cur­rently in dis­cus­sions with some French chefs to develop addi­tional prod­ucts related to olive oil,” Zeitoun con­cluded.