Sustainability

Every estate we buy from maintains permanent ground cover between rows rather than bare tilled soil. Cover cropping reduces erosion on slopes, increases water infiltration and builds soil organic carbon measurably within a few seasons.

Three of our four estates are certified organic. The fourth farms inside a PDO whose specification already prohibits most of what organic certification excludes.

Old trees are retained rather than grubbed for higher-density planting. A two-hundred-year-old Koroneiki yields poorly and stores a great deal of carbon.

Pomace — the solid residue after extraction — is composted on site and returned to the groves at two of our estates and sent to a biomass plant at the others. None goes to landfill.

Olive mill wastewater is the sector's genuine environmental problem. Two-phase decanters, which all our mills use, produce far less of it than the older three-phase systems.

Bottles are dark glass or glazed ceramic because light protection is a quality requirement, not a design choice. Outer packaging is unbleached corrugate with paper tape and moulded pulp inserts. No plastic void fill, no polystyrene.

Our walnut gift cases are made in Vermont from offcuts sourced from a furniture workshop, and they are designed to be kept and reused.

We consolidate inbound shipments from each estate into full pallets by sea and road rather than air freight, which is the single largest available emissions reduction in this supply chain.

Outbound orders travel by ground across North America. We do not offer same-day air delivery, and we are not planning to.

We are not carbon neutral and we do not buy offsets to say that we are. We publish what we actually do and let customers judge it.