Arbequine: the Queen of the Aragonese hills

Now that the olive harvest is taking place in northern Spain and the first olives of the season are being milled, it is the best time to speak about the Arbequine variety.

This renowned early and tiny variety of olive is the preference among the virgin olive oil gourmets. It is not in vain that many of them refers to the arbequine juice as the Beluga of the olive oils.

 

Since not every olive juice is the same, we encourage you to check the critical factors that boost this wonderful elixir to the gastronomic Olympus:

1. The best flavour, aroma and palete possible. It has a very  pleasant round taste, boasting a fresh fruity sweetness rounded with a distinctive bitterness. In mouth it feels silky and it leaves an intense long finish. It usually displays a nose of ripe fruit and almond.  It is just delicious when eaten raw over a crunchy slice of toasted bread.

2. It is popular for its green tones, especially when the olives are harvested at the earliest stages of maturation.

3. The arbequine oil is characterized by the inestability of its chemical compositition. Since this variety is more sensitive to oxidation, the fragile balance of its sensory attributes demands proper conservation conditions. Fresh and dark environments increase the product lifetime.   .

4. The growing region. The above said, the arbequine variety displays different sensory features depending on the type of soil and climate conditions associated to the place we find the plant. Arbequine trees require cold and continental climate in order to perform at their best. The vally of the Ebro (Aragon, where Lady Godina is situated) meets naturally these requirements so we can find traditional arbequine crops that need less use of chemicals.  

5. Here in the heart of Aragon, the tradicional cultivation system is the most widespread. For centuries, when the agriculture mechanisation and the artificial irrigation did not exist, the ancient groves followed a low density plantation pattern  (between 80 and 120 trees per ha.) that still remain the same nowadays.  

6. Although traditional cultivation does not allow high production rates, arbequine olive stands out among others for its high fat yield. Once the milling process is done,  we obtaing small but excellent product.

7. In the same way as wine, it is sometimes interesting mixing different varieties of oil - such as Picual or Empeltre among others -  in order to obtain a coupage of more complexity.