Olive oil is our hobby and we make two varieties of Your Olive Oil extra virgin olive oil – ‘Frantoio’ and ‘Corregiola’. Both are favourites among olive oil lovers. ‘Corregiola’ is perhaps a little stronger. Both varieties offer unique flavours and aromas.
We grow and press Your Olive Oil at Longwood in Victoria’s Strathbogie ranges, then filter and store in Melbourne so we can bottle it fresh.
What is special about ‘Your’ Extra Virgin Olive Oil?
“Your Olive Oil made all our food taste beautiful.” This comment from a first-time user sums up why we love growing and making olive oil. Fresh Olive Oil is increasingly the centrepiece worldwide of healthy diets and beautiful food.
Uses for Your Olive Oil are endless. Dip bread in it. Drizzle it on salads. Cook with it. Chefs say they use olive oil with everything. Fry tomatoes with it. Grill steak with it. Cook fish with it. Scramble eggs in it. Roast vegetables in it. Make chocolate brownie slice with it. Sip it as an aperitif. Use it for a gift. A recent favourite dish is Extra Virgin Olive Oil poured on Vanilla Ice Cream.
Our Information Page provides useful and intriguing facts and feelings about olives and olive oil.
Specially selected olives are picked by hand at our Olive Grove, brought up the hill to our press, made into Extra Virgin Olive Oil on the same day, and filtered for purity. Our objective is to bring out the wonderful natural flavours and aromas of the fresh fruit juice of the olive.
The History of olive oil adds pleasure to using it. Ancient Olympians were crowned with olive wreaths. Peace is symbolized by olive branches. A dove brought Noah an olive leaf to show that life had survived the Flood. Olive Oil is more than a unique Taste Sensation. It influences our Ways of Life.
Human beings have had a 10,000 year love affair with olive oil. While aroma and taste define good olive oil, its larger associations give it greater dimension. Accordingly, we can speak of:
. . . the aromatic sublimity of olive oil …
. . . the gastronomic universality of olive oil…
. . . the ancient contemporaneity of olive oil…
. . . the epicurean holiness of olive oil…

Your Olive Oil
Your Olive Oil, which we produce as a hobby, is cold pressed from premium ripe olives.
While this Your Olive Oil mix varies from year to year depending on the season and other variables, there is continuity and consistency about its calibre and qualities. Your Olive Oil is rich and ripe. Its aroma is fresh. Its taste is fruity and pungent. Its finish is warm. It is a delicious all-seasons, all-purpose oil. It has a curiously intense flavour that is created by combining our olive varieties – Frantoio, Corregiola, Manzanilla, Hardy’s Mammoth, Koroneiki, Verdale, Boutillon, Mission, Kalamata, Tiny Kalamata, White, and Nevadillo Blanco.
Your Olive Oil is equally good in salads, in cooking, and with bread.
Olive Oil on Toast. Aficionados love olive oil on toast. Try rubbing a fresh clove of garlic on a lightly toasted slice of sourdough bread, then spreading the toast with a couple of tablespoons of Your Olive Oil, then seasoning with salt and pepper.
Olive Oil Uses
Where once it was used for light and warmth, olive oil is now used to make food healthy and delicious. Whether with bread or salads, for frying or roasting, for cake or pudding making, in mashed potatoes or other vegetables, or simply taken neat as an aperitif, fine olive oil – preferably YOUR OLIVE OIL – gives incomparable results.
Please Contact us to share your views and experience in ways to use Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
About Us
We produce fine Extra Virgin Olive Oil. We aim for quality.
If you are interested in discussing Your Olive Oil, please email us on dmwhite1940@gmail.com, or call 0417 019 313.
OUR TREATMENT OF THE OIL: We press the oil daily when harvesting. Each batch of oil is filtered, and the yield from successive days’ production is poured – not pumped – into stainless steel tanks. Gentle treatment protects the quality of the oil. The oil is sealed in stainless tanks, where it remains undisturbed in controlled temperature storage until bottling when wanted. Each tank’s oil – and each year’s oil – is subtly different. The oil mellows over time, and remains good for a couple of years or more in proper conditions.
We like visitors to see the green, pink, purple and black olives ripening on our trees, and taste freshly pressed Your Olive Oil . Kangaroos often graze among our olive trees, and occasionally a koala walks through the grove in search of manna gums. Our olive grove is at Longwood, in the foothills of Victoria’s great Strathbogie ranges. The soil is granite outwash sands, ideal for olives because it drains well. The long, hot summers are perfect for ripening olives. Even with hot summer weather, it takes six months for the olives to ripen.

About Us
We produce fine Extra Virgin Olive Oil. We aim for quality.
If you are interested in discussing Your Olive Oil, please email us on dmwhite1940@gmail.com, or call 0417 019 313.
OUR TREATMENT OF THE OIL: We press the oil daily when harvesting. Each batch of oil is filtered, and the yield from successive days’ production is poured – not pumped – into stainless steel tanks. Gentle treatment protects the quality of the oil. The oil is sealed in stainless tanks, where it remains undisturbed in controlled temperature storage until bottling when wanted. Each tank’s oil – and each year’s oil – is subtly different. The oil mellows over time, and remains good for a couple of years or more in proper conditions.
We like visitors to see the green, pink, purple and black olives ripening on our trees, and taste freshly pressed Your Olive Oil . Kangaroos often graze among our olive trees, and occasionally a koala walks through the grove in search of manna gums. Our olive grove is at Longwood, in the foothills of Victoria’s great Strathbogie ranges. The soil is granite outwash sands, ideal for olives because it drains well. The long, hot summers are perfect for ripening olives. Even with hot summer weather, it takes six months for the olives to ripen.
Quality
You, the user, are the real judge of quality olive oil. An oil is good if it makes yourfood taste beautiful. This means bringing good ingredients to perfection, and lifting average ingredients off the floor.

To choose a good quality olive oil, it is best to be ‘led by the nose’. First, smell the oil, preferably in the bottle.
• If you can’t smell anything – or hardly anything – the oil is no good. It may not be positively bad, but it is certainly not good.
• If the oil smells ‘off’ – sour, or rancid, or musty – we suggest you move on.
• But if the oil smells clean and fresh, then you have a quality product.
Remember that quality olive oil is a fruit juice – it is squeezed fresh from the fruit of the olive tree.

The quality that you smell in a bottle of olive oil is backed by a long pedigree. Professor David Connor concludes, in a top research article, that “Cultivars are major determinants of quality, although that too is under environmental control”. This means that to get quality olive oil, you need the right trees, the right soil, the right plant food, the right climate, the right watering, the right picking at the right time, the right handling, the right cold pressing, the right filtering, the right storage, the right bottling – and the right distribution to ensure that you get your oil fresh.Your Olive Oil uses the motto “Let Nature Do Its Best”, because the real flavour and quality of olive oil comes from the tree.

There are other criteria besides aroma, and how it works with food, that can be used in choosing a quality olive oil. The International Olive Oil Council quality standards list several faults (such as rancidity), as well as looking for a good balance of fruitiness, bitterness and pungency. You would need expertise to make these tests.

For practical purposes, the best and simplest guide to quality in Extra Virgin Olive Oil is a clean, fresh aroma.
What is ‘Extra Virgin’?
Whatever its label or classification, a bottle of olive oil is only as good as its contents. This is why the surest and easiest way to obtain good olive oil is go to a reliable supplier.
Classifications such as ‘Extra Virgin’ for high quality oil have a place, but the tests they rely on are a long way from the oil that people buy. One of the few certainties about test-based classifications is that the tests were not performed on the oil in your bottle. It is almost inevitable that more attention to classifications will be followed by more mass-produced olive oil obtaining the highest classification. It would be naïve to imagine that commercial interests do not form part of these equations.
In the spirit of down-to-earth common sense in classifying olive oil, we are attracted to the idea on www.olio2go.com, an excellent Californian website, that
“One great way to test an oil is to grill a slice of bread, rub it with a bit of garlic, and drizzle on some oil. Good bread makes a big difference, and of course, some chopped tomato and basil wouldn’t hurt.”
The International Olive Council (IOC), headquartered in Spain, is the lead player in the development of classificatory systems for olive oil, including criteria for each classification. The IOC’s classifications can be seen onwww.internationaloliveoil.org: follow the prompts to ‘The Olive World’, then ‘Olive Oil’, then ‘Designations and Definitions of Olive Oil. “Extra Virgin Olive Oil” is of course the top IOC classification.
The IOC’s criteria are highly technical, but as we understand them, Extra Virgin Olive Oil as defined by the IOC means:
(i) olive oil with a ‘Free Fatty Acid’ content below 0.8%;
(ii) olive oil that is fault-free and is therefore not winey, not sour, not rough, not rancid, not musty, not muddy, not metallic, and not fusty;
(iii) olive oil that has the positive characteristics of fruitiness, bitterness and pungency.
A number of bodies, including some in Australia, have developed alternatives to the IOC’s classification. These alternatives continue to use “Extra Virgin Olive Oil” as the top classification, while at the same time developing different criteria or testing methods, Confusion is likely if the same term – “extra virgin” – is used to mean different things, which is partly why consumers are wise to find a reliable supplier for their olive oil.
Historical classifications provide an interesting sidelight on old-fashioned quality. As documented in the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “virgin” was used in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries with reference not only to olive oil, but also to wine and honey. In 1707, a Mr Mortimer said “The honey which first flows of it self from the Combs is called Virgin Honey”; in 1799 a Mr Smith said to “Take the first, or virgin wine, which runs of itself from the grapes”; and in 1853, a Mr Ure said “In the district Montpellier, they apply the term virgin oil to that which spontaneously separates from the paste of crushed olives”. These quotes come from the Oxford English Dictionary.
The superior quality of the olive oil that rises to the top during malaxing – known as ‘afiorata’ – is still recognised, although it is not easy to get hold of this truly virgin product. In the workaday world of making and selling olive oil, it is likely that the word ‘extra’ was added to ‘virgin’ to gain a marketing edge.
What is ‘Extra Virgin’?
Whatever its label or classification, a bottle of olive oil is only as good as its contents. This is why the surest and easiest way to obtain good olive oil is go to a reliable supplier.
Classifications such as ‘Extra Virgin’ for high quality oil have a place, but the tests they rely on are a long way from the oil that people buy. One of the few certainties about test-based classifications is that the tests were not performed on the oil in your bottle. It is almost inevitable that more attention to classifications will be followed by more mass-produced olive oil obtaining the highest classification. It would be naïve to imagine that commercial interests do not form part of these equations.
In the spirit of down-to-earth common sense in classifying olive oil, we are attracted to the idea on www.olio2go.com, an excellent Californian website, that
“One great way to test an oil is to grill a slice of bread, rub it with a bit of garlic, and drizzle on some oil. Good bread makes a big difference, and of course, some chopped tomato and basil wouldn’t hurt.”
The International Olive Council (IOC), headquartered in Spain, is the lead player in the development of classificatory systems for olive oil, including criteria for each classification. The IOC’s classifications can be seen onwww.internationaloliveoil.org: follow the prompts to ‘The Olive World’, then ‘Olive Oil’, then ‘Designations and Definitions of Olive Oil. “Extra Virgin Olive Oil” is of course the top IOC classification.
The IOC’s criteria are highly technical, but as we understand them, Extra Virgin Olive Oil as defined by the IOC means:
(i) olive oil with a ‘Free Fatty Acid’ content below 0.8%;
(ii) olive oil that is fault-free and is therefore not winey, not sour, not rough, not rancid, not musty, not muddy, not metallic, and not fusty;
(iii) olive oil that has the positive characteristics of fruitiness, bitterness and pungency.
A number of bodies, including some in Australia, have developed alternatives to the IOC’s classification. These alternatives continue to use “Extra Virgin Olive Oil” as the top classification, while at the same time developing different criteria or testing methods, Confusion is likely if the same term – “extra virgin” – is used to mean different things, which is partly why consumers are wise to find a reliable supplier for their olive oil.
Historical classifications provide an interesting sidelight on old-fashioned quality. As documented in the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “virgin” was used in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries with reference not only to olive oil, but also to wine and honey. In 1707, a Mr Mortimer said “The honey which first flows of it self from the Combs is called Virgin Honey”; in 1799 a Mr Smith said to “Take the first, or virgin wine, which runs of itself from the grapes”; and in 1853, a Mr Ure said “In the district Montpellier, they apply the term virgin oil to that which spontaneously separates from the paste of crushed olives”. These quotes come from the Oxford English Dictionary.
The superior quality of the olive oil that rises to the top during malaxing – known as ‘afiorata’ – is still recognised, although it is not easy to get hold of this truly virgin product. In the workaday world of making and selling olive oil, it is likely that the word ‘extra’ was added to ‘virgin’ to gain a marketing edge.
Pressing
The process of drawing the oil out of olives is called “Pressing”. “Pressing olives” involves three distinct pressing processes. If you visit an olive press, you will invariably find machines that perform three functions: crushing, stirring, and separating. Olive presses has been evolving for over two thousand years, and arguments have raged for centuries about which crushers are best, which stirrers are best, and which separators are best. But there is no room for argument about the three stages of pressing.
• First, the olives must be crushed. For centuries olives were crushed by squeezing them under giant stone rollers, Today’s cleaner way is to grind them in stainless steel hammer mills. Crushing is an essential part of pressing olives because the impermeability of an olive’s skin, the firm structure of its flesh, and the hardness of its stone, make it is impossible to draw out the oil while the olives are whole.
• Secondly the crushed olives must be stirred, a process called ‘malaxing’. For centuries, the olives were malaxed by letting them slosh in the pit with the grindstones rolling around tham. Today’s quicker way is to stir the olive paste with rotating stainless steel blades in stainless steel tubs. Malaxing is an essential part of pressing, because most of the oil in olives is held in microscopic sacks called vacuoles, and the oil cannot get free until the skins of the vacuoles have been breached. The temperature should be in the mid-twenties Celsius – not so cold that the vacuoles cannot release the oil, not so hot that the oil loses its punch.
• Thirdly, the crushed and stirred olive paste must be put under pressure to separate the oil from the rest of the olive. For centuries, pressure was applied by squeezing the paste between two wooden plates, and some processors still regard this as the best method, although the plates are now steel instead of wood. The more common method today is to press out the oil with centrifugal force. Whatever the method, pressure is an essential to let the oil run free.
An olive press, with an unmistakeable and permeating olive smell, and the magic of the green-gold oil flowing from the press, is a matchless combination of traditional romanticism and unremitting work. The presser loves to hear murmurs of ‘beautiful oil’, and ‘good yield’ from the onlookers. Modern olive presses are hi-tech machines, but operators require skill and dedication to produce fine oil.
Good pressing requires finesse as well as technique. It is not just a matter of removing leaves and imperfect olives, or keeping the temperature right. It is also a matter of judging when the olives are optimally malaxed, how much pressure to put the paste under, and how much oil to draw out of the paste.
As explained on the Research page, we chose a centrifugal press because of evidence suggesting that the oil lasts better. We have a small press, which makes our operation more like home-cooking than factory production. We can lift and move and pour the oil by hand, without ever needing to pump it. With this approach, we try to “Let Nature do its best”.
Taste
Like other famous foods and drinks, fine Extra Virgin Olive Oil has a special taste that is all its own. Its characteristic taste is one of the great benchmark flavours of the world. It is also one of the most unforgettable. It is on a par with great taste sensations like French cognac, Leatherwood honey, and Scotch whisky.
Good olive oil has a strong taste – a balance of fruitiness, pungency and bitterness. It blends with other flavours in cooking, and improves them. It imparts its own flavour with bread or on salads. Because of its strength and bitterness, few people like Extra Virgin Olive Oil neat. A decent olive oil will take your breath away, and probably make you cough if you sip it. But if you try Your Olive Oil as an aperitif, and savor its aroma, you will find its strong taste delicious.
Your Olive Oil puts the final finish on the taste of food. It provides its own unique taste sensations. This is why olive oil is so highly valued, and it is no accident that human beings have had a 10,000 year love affair with olives. Olive oil in the kitchen is like the most popular person at a party. It is good because it is natural, because it is pure, because it is the juice of a fruit, because it is alive, because it is a good mixer. It improves taste by moistening and enriching food.
There is no single ‘correct’ taste for a good olive oil. Of course good olive oil is always savoury, with some pungency and bite. It is never sweet. Some afficionados like bitter, peppery oils, while others choose delicate, fruitier oils. Some like oils infused with different flavours, while others prefer the pure olive taste. Taste is subjective and individual. This is actually reflected in olive oil judging. Nobody likes oil that is rancid, musty, fusty, muddy, vinegary, sour, or metallic – and these are the faults that judges look for. When there are no faults, the positives can speak for themselves.
The Mediterranean Way of Life
Writing about the Olive Harvest, Mary Taylor Simeti said:
‘An entire way of life is contained in this small fruit’.
What is this way of life, and why does it matter?
It matters because ways of life explain and also express our human world. As individuals, as families and as nations, we make our own ways of life. These ways of life reflect what we are. We go with them where they take us, and we become what they make us. Since history began, human beings have been prepared to give up their lives to defend their ways of life.
The way of life that is contained in ‘this small fruit’ is a good life. It is a life that forms and bonds relationships. It is a life that increases well-being, for olives are healthy. It is a life that protects our world, for olive products are natural, and olive trees long-lived. It is a life that respects our fellow human beings, for olives are unique to none and enjoyed by all. It is a life that values success, for the olive wreath crowns the winner. It is a life that makes labor a love, for the fruit of the olive does not come easily or cheaply. It is a life that moderates conflict, for the olive is the symbol of peace. It is a life that overcomes disaster, for it was an olive leaf that was brought to Noah to show that the Flood had been rolled back.
Two simple conclusions follow from all this. The first is that no other fruit can match the olive. The second is that no human being need fear to eat an olive.
Anyone interested in philosophy may be interested in Denis White’s book The World of Man. This book is a fresh philosophy of life – including government and politics – that focuses on people and their ways of life. The World of Man is available for purchase online as both an E-Book (at www.amazon.com/dp/B00D2IV3BC), and a paperback (at https://createspace.com/4191729).
Research
Research on olive oil is ongoing and extensive – in Italy and Spain, Germany and Israel, the United States and Australia. Fresh knowledge acts as a spur to help modernise the olive industry.
The main areas of olive oil research are productivity, quality, and impact on health – plus market research, of course.
A recent example of potentially useful research concerns a significant link between olive oil quality and possible health benefits. Good olive oil is bitter, and this bitterness is caused by substances called ‘polyphenols’. These polyphenols also happen to be antioxidants. Tests have therefore been devised to show how long these polyphenols – antioxidants – last in various olive oils. These tests may provide information for useful ‘Use By’ dates, assuming that antioxidants are good for human health. In considering this kind of research, it is important to bear in mind that there is always more to the whole picture than any particular piece of research.
Practical spin-offs from research are always unpredictable. When we were choosing between a centrifugal olive press and a hydraulic mat press, we found a research article suggesting that the extra virgin olive oil from a centrifugal press had superior lasting qualities. This information helped make up our minds for us, although we doubt this was the intention of the researcher.
A current issue under investigation regarding productivity is whether olive trees can be successfully grown as hedges. The idea behind this is to make it easier to pick olives by using grape harvesters. Other longstanding research subjects related to productivity include getting more flowers to produce olives, reducing the number of olives that fall off before they can be harvested, and making trees produce good crops every year instead of only every second year.
Not surprisingly, some market research indicates that consumers don’t always like the characteristics – particularly bitterness – that trained tasters look for in top olive oils. On the other hand, there is also evidence that as people become more familiar with olive oil, they start to enjoy the characteristics – including a balance of fruitiness, pungency and bitterness – that trained tasters agree on. And in Australia, multiple tests have consistently shown that first time tasters can tell the difference between fresh and stale olive oil, and that they prefer it fresh. This is a ringing endorsement of a commitment to quality based on quality research.
We invite readers to Contact Us to discuss any ideas or issues about olive oil research.
Stories
Like wine, olive oil is romantic. There is a charming array of books about renovating ancient homes with olive groves in Tuscany and other Mediterranean destinations. These books are as much about renovating lives as renovating homes.
There are equally charming books about creating new olive groves, dedicated to producing the highest quality and most delicious olive oil, in countries like Australia.
The passion for olive oil draws consumers in the transforming and civilizing direction of more natural lives. This page is dedicated to overviewing a few stories.
Frances Mayes’s Under The Tuscan Sun puts a warm patina on the hard work of revitalising trees, restoring houses, and re-working a metropolitan lifestyle. The satisfaction of accomplishment spills out of every word, along with the sense of a fuller life, and a deeper understanding of humanity.
Patrice Newell’s The Olive Grove is a fresh and forward-looking story about moving from a television job in Sydney to a 10,000 acre farm in the Hunter Valley, and deciding to plant a brand new olive grove. ‘Once we’ve settled on the romantic idea of planting our own grove, we’re faced with the practical decision of where to put it’ (38). Although olive trees are not native, ‘their willowing shimmer has an Australian cadence – like our humour, dry and understated’ (236). She has created a biodynamic haven for the production of great food.
Patrice Newell’s achievement is a challenge to the future as much as the past.
Annie Hawes found life ‘amongst the Olive Groves of Liguria’ so appealing that she left London behind. Her book ‘Extra Virgin’ presents a delightful picture of adapting full-time to the life of olive farming in Italy. She makes the case for fulfilment based on a combination of personal achievement, healthy food, community engagement, and working with nature. She concludes a story of a man who survived a great fall by landing in a pile of olive waste by asking ‘Is there no end to the versatility of the olive?’ (322)
Geoffrey Luck’s Villa Fortuna is ‘the story of an Australian couple’s experience of living in both Italies’ (7), i.e. the Italy of historic grandeur, and the Italy of Italians today. The Luck family added 50 new trees to the ‘one remaining old olive tree’ inside the boundary of their new home in Umbria. These trees gave them credit in their community, where the ‘tradition lives on’ of ‘the very special, almost mystical importance attached to the oil of the olive’ (268). ‘To have one’s own oliveto is not merely important in producing oil for the household, which on average uses between fifty and one hundred litres a year, it is prestigious… “You will be self-sufficient”, everyone told us’ (268). On the virtues of olive oil, ‘what the ancients know from experience, modern scientists have proven with their chemical analysis – olive oil is good for you. Containing no cholesterol, it is the best form of fat to use to avoid heart disease, and it reduces gastric acidity… None of this makes up for the fact that olives have to be picked in bitter weather’ (269).
Carol Drinkwater’s The Olive Farm has Mae West’s ‘Too much of a good thing can be wonderful’ as one of its mottoes. But when it comes to the work of picking the olives and laying out nets to catch them, she is mindful of the fact that ‘the work we are doing here is keeping faith with the past. It has been acted out for thousands of years. The olive is un arbre noble, a noble tree… It is considered a divine tree, too… There is dignity and humility in this work’ (251).
Paul Gervais’ A Garden in Lucca is billed as a ‘lyrical portrait of an antique Italian villa, with its olive groves and vineyards, filled with lively lunches, impertinent peacocks and vibrant local characters’. Gervais writes that ‘if the garden is a metaphor for all that we touch with a fervid stretch of our imaginations, then this book will describe my life, or way of life, in a place that (certain) people… will inevitably call, in wistful tones, “paradise”’ (3). And later, ‘it was nothing short of momentous that afternoon in April when I stood in the cleaned up courtyard after a day’s work… My back ached, but I couldn’t have felt better’ (161).
What comes out of all this that there is a rare magic in any involvement with olives and the olive oil which they yield up to enhance our ways of life.

Quotes
“The olive tree, Olea europaea, valued for both its beauty and its fruit, has been a part of Mediterranean civilization since before recorded history.” Joseph H. Connell, in The Olive Production Manual

On French meals in the brasseries of Paris: “The pommes a l’huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draft of beer I drank and ate very slowly.” Ernest Hemingway, in A Moveable Feast

When you have finished planting an olive tree, “Give the new tree a generous drink, and maybe have one yourself.” Michael Burr, in Australian Olives

In her charming Under The Tuscan Sun (Bantam, 1998), Frances Mayes says of the original ‘Nonna’ of her Tuscan home, “Nonna’s most essential, elemental ingredient surely was olive oil. Her woodstove was fired with the prunings; she dipped her bread in a plate of oil for toast, she doused her soups and pasta sauces with her lovely green oil. Cloth sacks of olives hung in the chimney to smoke over the winter. Even her soap was made from oil and the ashes from her fireplace.” (78)

The Bible: Olive trees and olive oil are featured in the first and last books of the Bible, and in many places along the way. The successive references to olives form an interesting story in themselves.

(i) The first reference is in the book of Genesis, in the story of Noah’s Ark and the great flood which covered the whole earth. After the forty days and nights of rain came to an end, Noah tried to find out whether the flood was abating. So “He sent forth the dove out of the ark; and the dove came in to him in the evening; and lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off; so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth” (Genesis, ch 8, verse 10-11).

(ii) The next reference is in the book of Exodus, regarding the Tabernacle which Moses was to tell the children of Israel to make. “And thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they bring thee pure oil olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamp to burn always” (Exodus, 27, 20). Moses was later told to add myrrh and cinnamon and other spices to olive oil, and to tell the children of Israel that “This shall be an holy anointing oil unto me throughout your generations” (Exodus, 30, 31)

(iii) The next reference is in the book of Deuteronomy, where Moses is told that the land into which God will bring his people will be “A good land,… a land of oil olive”, as well as a land of wheat and barley and vines, of fig trees and pomegranates, and of honey (Deut, 8, 8).

(iv) Then, in the book of Hosea, where God calls on Israel to repent, the promise is made to Israel that “His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree” (Hosea, 14, 6).

(v) Moving to the New Testament, St Paul, in his letter to the Romans, makes the olive tree a metaphor for salvation. He says that “If the root be holy, so are the branches. And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among the branches, and with them partook of the root and fatness of the olive tree, boast not against the branches” (Romans, 11, 16-18).

(vi) Finally, the book of Revelation states that “These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth. And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies.” (Revelation, 11, 4-5).