How the Climate Makes and Breaks One Award-Winning Producer’s Harvest

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Dotting the gen­tle slopes of the green hills sur­round­ing a small Croatian vil­lage close to the Adriatic Sea, the pro­duc­ers behind Turinela Farm craft their award-win­ning extra vir­gin olive oil.

The olive trees of the Volarević fam­ily are inter­spersed with cork oaks, aro­matic lau­rels, rose­mary and laven­der just out­side of Mali Turini, in the cen­tral-west­ern part of the Istrian penin­sula.

From their trees, Aurora, Marijo, Helena and Filip Volarević craft a blend that earned a Gold Award at the last two edi­tions of the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

The pro­duc­ers told Olive Oil Times that the cli­mate in this north­ern olive grow­ing region is both a valu­able ally and a sig­nif­i­cant obsta­cle in pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity olive oil.

Situated on the 45^th par­al­lel, Mali Turini is among the north­ern­most olive-grow­ing regions in the world. The farm­ers believe the tem­per­a­tures are pre­cisely what a healthy and fruit­ful olive tree needs.

“We are a rel­a­tively new farm, but you can find so many peo­ple through­out the coun­try who have revived old farms or dis­cov­ered they had olive trees on their land and decided to start grow­ing olives again,” Helena Volarević said. ​“Suddenly, they found out they could pro­duce high-qual­ity olive oil.”

Turinela’s Premium Selection is a blend of the local olive Buza vari­ety with Istrian Bjelica, Pendolino, Leccino, Maurino and Lastovka olives. Since the Volarević fam­ily has its ori­gins in Dalmatia, they also planted some native Obliza trees on the farm.

Buza olives are mainly grown in south­ern Istria and neigh­bor­ing Slovenia. Research is under­way to estab­lish its com­mon genetic her­itage with other olive trees found in the region.

“In its early har­vest, this vari­ety [Buza olives] pro­duces a lively green extra vir­gin olive oil with a full-bod­ied taste, a long fruity after­taste,” Marijo Volarević said. ​“It has char­ac­ter­is­tic olive, arti­choke and apple scents with a bal­anced piquancy and bit­ter­ness.”

While the Buza olives are the main con­trib­u­tor to their blend, Volarević said all the olive trees play an impor­tant role in estab­lish­ing the oil’s unique fla­vor.

“Growing together, they begin blend­ing dur­ing the bloom­ing and pol­li­na­tion phases,” he said.

When the har­vest arrives, all the olives are picked on the same day and trans­formed into a sin­gle batch.

“This ideal com­bi­na­tion of vari­eties and grove posi­tion gives the oil a supe­rior bou­quet-full, rich aroma with a spec­trum of scents with just the right bit­ter­ness and piquant,” Volarević said.

The fam­ily began pro­duc­ing olive oil in 2009, reviv­ing an uncul­ti­vated area that belonged to Aurora Volarević’s fam­ily.

“We stud­ied the cli­mate and ana­lyzed the soil to see how best we could man­age the land,” Volarević, a biotech­nol­ogy sci­en­tist, told Olive Oil Times. ​“The area is a lit­tle more than 20,000 square meters, and we planted olive trees in three dif­fer­ent areas which are quite close to each other. Altogether there are 500 trees.”

Since reviv­ing land, the Volarević fam­ily has started tran­si­tion­ing to solely organic prac­tices.

“Four years ago, we planted a few hun­dred hazel­nut trees whose cul­ti­va­tion is entirely organic. We also use com­pletely organic fer­til­izer for our olive trees,” Volarević said. ​“Our chal­lenge here is that the nearby olive farms are not organic.”

Marijo Volarević added that the pro­duc­ers’ only non-organic inter­ven­tions are to pre­vent dam­age from the olive fruit fly.

The area is highly suit­able for qual­ity olive oil pro­duc­tion as local millers are equipped with state-of-the-art mills.

“Our friend here with his olive mill allows us to har­vest the olives, and within a few hours from har­vest, we cold-press them,” Volarević said.

The main chal­lenge for the fam­ily is the weather. While the cli­mate is tra­di­tion­ally ideal for olive grow­ing, unex­pected events increas­ingly com­pli­cate har­vest­ing and trans­for­ma­tion.

“This year, it hap­pened with the sud­den frost in the wrong moment,” Helena Volarević said. ​“In the win­ter, the typ­i­cal win­ter freeze would have been use­ful to help kill the pests, but it does not freeze.”

“In sum­mer, you get the drought. So we are con­stantly fac­ing weather which is work­ing against us,” she added. ​“This means that we have to make sure that we are doing all we can to allow the olive trees to thrive.”

According to Marijo Volarević, the pres­ence of mul­ti­ple vari­eties and the proper prun­ing has a ben­e­fi­cial effect in cur­tail­ing the nat­ural alter­nate bear­ing cycle of the olive tree, ​“but it is weather that really decides how it will go.”

Aurora Volarević added that Istrian farm­ers notice the grow­ing impacts of cli­mate change.

“We see that hap­pen­ing. For exam­ple, if the bloom­ing hap­pens too close to the start of hot weather, it can really be a prob­lem for the olives,” Volarević said.

“And this hap­pened last year to some local grow­ers,” she added. ​“Since the snow came late, the trees needed at least two weeks after­wards to begin grow­ing again. That made them bloom at least two weeks later than expected, too close to the warmest months of the year.”

Each year, the Volarević fam­ily has con­tin­ued to improve their olive farm­ing and pro­duc­tion tech­niques, which even­tu­ally gave them the con­fi­dence to enter a local qual­ity com­pe­ti­tion where they earned a gold award.

Three years later, Turinela earned its first award at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, the world’s largest olive oil qual­ity com­pe­ti­tion.

“Since our first win in the local com­pe­ti­tion, we were say­ing that a day would have come that we could win an award in New York,” Aurora Volarević said.

The fam­ily explained how they would not have won these awards with­out learn­ing from local farm­ers, whose expe­ri­ence proved essen­tial in under­stand­ing how to face the many chal­lenges of olive farm­ing.

“The com­mu­nity here is very rel­e­vant for us,” Helena Volarević said. ​“We are in a small area, where peo­ple exchange views. We sup­port each other.”

“With the other olive oil pro­duc­ers, we exchange views on prun­ing tech­niques and best prac­tices, but also work together and try to work to show the world how local extra vir­gin olive oil can be a truly high-qual­ity prod­uct,” Marijo Volarević con­cluded