The English Olive Press; February ‘26
Welcome to The English Olive Oil Club Newsletter. The olive trees have endured their coldest temperatures to date, we travelled to Italy for research and an award, and get ready for Olive You Day!
Thank you to all those who have subscribed to our Newsletter and you are now members of our English Olive Oil Club! Before we share timely news on social media we will update you, our English Olive Oil Club members, with the news first, giving you a heads up on what we are up to and imminent product availabilities. With the help of Stewart from Studio Optic we have created a Club logo which we will use in many ways going forward, including bespoke merchandise. For those of you who are reading this and would like to Subscribe then please head to our website Home page, and click ‘Subscribe to Newsletter.’
In the first week of January a cold front hit the olive grove, firstly bringing snow, and then dropping temperatures to -8C. This was the coldest temperatures the trees had experienced, following the -6C we had in the same week back in January 2024 when we lost a few hundred trees. With the trees being one year older and having adapted more to UK temperatures, then currently it doesn’t look like the even colder temperature this year has killed any of the trees. No plants like sudden changes or shocks in temperatures, so the gradual temperature decrease has been the saving grace.
The frost has however taken out several of the younger growing points of the trees, with these immature leaves now going brown and curling up. The trees will naturally recover from this, and will produce two to three new branches from that frosted off point. Sometimes this can save us a job of pruning out the apical dominance to encourage branching to our desired branch length and tree shape, or if we are not so lucky, then this frost induced unwanted branching will be corrected by pruning out non desired branches in the spring.
Snow covered and frosty conditions hit the olive grove in the first week of January.
As our olive grove management learning continues, in the third week of January David and Connor flew in to Puglia, in southern Italy, to visit our good friends at Cericola in Foggia to see how their harvest 2025 performed, gain more advice on tree management and to look at their new massive 12 tonne per hour olive milling line.
Following the very poor yields across the Mediterranean in 2024, then harvest 2025 has been back to average, and even better than average in some varieties, with great quality and good yields where water for irrigation was available. The majority of the crops were harvested in good time, but any crops that were left for January harvest, when the olives would be more mature (red/black in colour) to try and achieve maximum oil yield (but less flavour), have now been hit with unusually cold and wet conditions and may be lost.
Many of the olive groves around the Puglia region had already undertaken their winter mechanical pruning, and with the unexpected and unusual recent frosts then some of the trees were not looking too happy! With the stems and branches exposed to the cold and wet conditions then the outer areas of the trees had turned a bit yellow. The frost damage was evident to different levels by variety, with some varieties not being affected by the cold at all. Cold tolerance was our main plant trait when we selected the varieties for our English olive grove.
David & Connor visit Puglia looking at winter pruning (with frost damage) and olive plant machinery, and proudly received an award at the Milan olive festival.
From Puglia, we then headed up north to the capital of the Lombardy region, Milan, for the Milan Olio Officina Festival, covering all aspects of olive oil; educating consumers, tastings, bottle designs, nutrition, government policy, alternative uses and getting the next generation interested . In addition to all these aspects there was an award ceremony, and we were delighted to be presented with the Premio Personaggio Dell’Anno 2025 award (the person of the year award). This award was presented to us for our courage and commitment in successfully establishing the worlds most northernly olive grove, with visionary entrepreneurship.
We are very honoured and very proud to have received this fantastic award, and especially from the Italian olive oil experts. We learnt a great deal from the festival, met many fellow olive oil producers with groves of vastly different sizes, and were re-emphasised as to how the industry must continue to share the unique health benefits and multiple uses of olive oil.
As we approach the 14th February, we thought we would try and help out with your gifting choices for Valentines Day, by highlighting two specific gifts; bespoke heart shaped leather bag/bottle ties and our hand carved olive wood dish…….in olive language; Olive You!
Working with luxury leather brand Priestleys (www.priestleys.uk), who are also based in Lincolnshire, Karrie has hand cut and crafted a limited number of beautiful leather heart shaped bag / bottle ties for us, embossed with The English Olive Co logo. These premium leather ties are suitable to hang over any bottle, be it olive oil, wine, whisky or perfume, or are equally suited to be tied on to any bag or laptop case as a little reminder of your loved one. The leather is responsibly sourced, from the Leather Working Group using premium vegetable-tanned leather.
An alternative gifting idea is our hand carved olive wood heart shaped tapas or nick-nack dish. The lovely olive wood grain smartly compliments any kitchen worktop or dressing table; equally suited for his and hers jewellery or nick-nacks, as well as fruit or nuts or olives. It has been branded with The English Olive Co on its side and the wood is sourced from sustainable Mediterranean olive groves, mainly from old trees that are past their productive life, and have been replaced by younger productive trees.
Both of these products are many more gifts for the home are now exclusively available for sale on our website shop, www.englisholive.co.uk/shop
Heart shaped bottle & bag ties made locally by luxury leather brand Priestleys and our hand carved olive wood heart bowls…..ideal ways to say Olive You on 14th February!
We look forward to enjoying the day length increasing and the sights and sounds of spring appearing in the olive grove once more. Thank you all for your continued support in The English Olive Co, and for more regular updates please follow our socials @TheEnglishOliveCo.
Best wishes,
David