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Food tours are a boom­ing busi­ness, with peo­ple want­ing to learn how what they eat goes from farm to plate, or in this case, to bot­tle. As part of this grow­ing indus­try, sev­eral oper­a­tors have nar­rowed their focus to one vari­ety of olive oil to bet­ter explore the his­tory and impor­tance of this ancient food to its local cul­ture.

Olives and the oil extracted from them have played a vital role in the lives of peo­ple along the Mediterranean for cen­turies. Today, whether in Spain, Italy, or Croatia, vis­i­tors can wan­der through olive groves, learn about the oil-extrac­tion process, and, most impor­tant, sam­ple the final goods. Though the tours are offered year-round, the best time to par­take is late fall into early win­ter, dur­ing the oil-press­ing sea­son.

Although oils labeled as Spanish might be a less famil­iar choice on American shelves, most of the olive oil sold on the world mar­ket orig­i­nates in Spain. Since the Phoenicians and Greeks first brought some trees to the Iberian penin­sula, Spaniards have trea­sured olive oil.

Guides from Olive Oil Tour in Granada, Spain, lead par­tic­i­pants through olive-laden trees out­side an Andalusian vil­lage and intro­duce them to a 15^th-cen­tury mill where they learn about tra­di­tional oil-pro­cess­ing tech­niques that had been prac­ticed there. The tour wraps up with an olive oil tast­ing and a dis­cus­sion about ways to incor­po­rate the oil into all types of foods, both sweet and savory.

Olive oil has been a sta­ple of Italian cui­sine since Ancient Rome, when the empire was intro­duced to this liq­uid gold dur­ing its for­ays in to for­eign lands. Olive groves flour­ished through­out what is now mod­ern-day Italy until the 16^th and 17^th cen­turies, when var­i­ous bat­tles and wars brought such dis­or­der to the region that the only grow­ers that remained were tucked away in Tuscany.

Today in this cen­tral region of Italy, lux­ury food and wine tour plan­ner Le Baccanti shows vis­i­tors the high­lights of the olive oil indus­try in a small town between Florence and Siena. Through learn­ing about the dif­fer­ences between tra­di­tional and mod­ern extrac­tion processes as well as what oil tasters are look­ing for in a great sam­ple, tour tak­ers can walk away edu­cated about the impor­tance this food holds for this region.

Some con­sider Croatian olive oil to be among the best the world. Šoltansko masli­novo ulje, which is oil pro­duced on the island of Šolta off the cen­tral Dalmatian Coast, has even been awarded offi­cial Protected Geographic Indications and Protected Designations of Origin sta­tus, join­ing the likes of Champagne and Roquefort cheese.

Olive oil afi­ciona­dos can day-trip to Šolta to tour Olynthia Natura. There they can lay hands on 1,000-year-old-plus olive trees, spec­i­mens of some of the old­est cul­ti­vated trees in the world. After tour­ing the groves, par­tic­i­pants head to the mill where guides from the Kastelanac fam­ily lead a ​“Taste Like a Pro” class, shar­ing their knowl­edge gained from four gen­er­a­tions of olive oil pro­duc­ers.

While strolling through the boughs of olive trees, bend­ing under the weight of their fruits, vis­i­tors to these three coun­tries can expe­ri­ence the age-old process of the olive har­vest and pro­cess­ing that has kept these nations alive and healthy for gen­er­a­tions.

• Olive Oil Tour in Granada, Spain


• Le Baccanti Tuscan Olive Oil Press Tour


• Olynthia Natura