Mas des Barres Olive Oil Mill South of France Provence

A trip to the South of France doesn't seem complete without a visit to an olive mill, after all some of the best olive oils in the world are produced here.  While driving through the Vallée des Baux of Provence, our  Culinary Getaways group visited Mas des Barres, a family owned and operated olive mill.

Since 1992, the Quenin family has been producing high quality olive oil from this AOC-designated region, growing olives, carefully selecting fruit and milling them into fine oils.  Their standards for excellence have garnered several accolades and prestigious distinction, including a gold medal in 2004 from the International Olive Oil Council, it doesn't get much better than that for an olive oil producer. 

While waiting for Jean-Baptiste, a second generation family member of the Quenin family, I looked over to the hundreds of olive trees and imagined what it must be like to live on this estate. The summers spent sitting under the canopy of thick tangled fig tree branches, surrounded by fine wines and fresh seasonal food. It is no wonder that people romanticize this region so much, it is just stunning in its natural beauty.

Before we headed to the olive groves, we stopped at the olive oil boutique, and found nearly every product that could be imagine made from olives. In addition to olive oil, there were beautifully carved wooden bowls made from olive wood, olive candles and a broad selection of beauty products. All of the beauty products were natural and paraben-free, which I found particularly impressive. The emphasis of natural, whether it be food or make-up seems to be a deeply embedded philosophy across Europe.

Outside, we walked with Jean-Baptiste to check out the expansive grounds. Notice the chalky white color of the distant mountain range. It is an indication of the limestone composition of this region. There are very few crops that grow in such poor quality soil, but olive trees, grape vines and fig trees thrive where others would struggle. In this range, the Quenin family has established over one hundred oak trees infected with black truffle spores. They expect to be able to harvest truffles in a few years from this plot of land. This is spectacular foresight on their part, and I hope one day to return to conduct a truffle hunt with Jean-Baptiste. 

According to Jean-Baptiste, who is a wonderfully charming man, the estate grows five varieties of olives: picholine, grossane, verdale, béruguette, salonenque. Picholine is my favorite. When René Quenin, Jean-Baptiste's father, began the olive mill in 1992, he instructed the family to produce only what they were able to sell. In 1992 that meant going through 70 tons, today it is in excess of 500 tons of olives. "The Vallée des Baux represents a small but extremely interesting “terroir”, the quality and diversity of olive oils depend on the exposure of our olive trees, as well as on all our complementary varieties of olives!" says René.

Inside the olive mill facility, we observe how much of the traditional processes have been augmented with modern machinery. This spiral tube lifts the olive fruit and drops them into cold water bath to undergo a thorough rinsing.

As you can see in the picture above, there are tiny holes where water shoot from to help separate dirt and pebbles that may be stuck onto the olive fruit. The cleaned olives float and spill into the next tank, while the dirt and pebbles remain.

The olives are then grounded with these steel wheels for roughly two hours.

The grounded olives then enter into this tank to expel the olive oil from the olive fiber. As stated before  today the mill uses about 500 metric tons of olive fruit producing between 80,000 and 100,000 liters.

Once extracted, the olive fibers are scattered onto the grounds to become a natural fertilizer for the olive trees. This is the only treatment that they apply to their crop, and I think this is recycling at its best.

The resulting olive oils are stored in large plastic tanks, after which the Quentin family exhaustively taste and blend to determine balanced mix. In 2004, their ambition for an olive oil with a diverse, mild, very fruity flavor profile won favor with the International Council of Olive Oil when it was declared the best of the world in the "mildly fruity" category, ahead of an Italian and a Spanish producer.

Outside, we gathered around the table under the ancient gnarled fig trees for an olive oil tasting. The bottle to the left contains fresh unfiltered olive oil, while the one to the right of it had been aged for one year.  For some reason, I had in mind, the fresher the olive oil the better. Not so.

The fresh olive oil had an overwhelming harsh grassy bitterness, while the flavor of the aged olive oil was well-rounded and harmonious with vegetal nuances of artichoke, fresh herbs, followed by black pepper notes with a long pleasant nutty finish.

Jean Baptiste, who is a very humble man and initially camera shy, broke out and struck a fun pose.  This is one of my favorite memories of the trip.