About La Cultivada
- Based in
- Córdoba, Spain
- Known for
- organic early-harvest extra virgin olive oil
La Cultivada is the family project of Elena Vecino, its founder and CEO. The land at Finca Cortijo Molino de Santa Ana, in the southwest countryside of Córdoba, came from her maternal grandparents, and her father, Pedro Vecino Riera, revived the olive grove that once stood there. The mill on the property dates from the late 1800s.
The oil is organic and made entirely from the family's own Hojiblanca olives. They are picked green in October and November and extracted mechanically, like a juice, without heat or additives.
Early harvest extra virgin olive oil is generally used raw, poured over salads, roasted vegetables, fish, pasta or soups.
La Cultivada questions
What does early harvest mean for olive oil?
It means the olives are picked green, before they ripen. La Cultivada picks its Hojiblanca olives, a Spanish variety, in October and November. Green olives give only about half as much oil as fully ripe ones, but the oil tastes greener, with more bitterness and a peppery bite, which is why early harvest oils are best used raw.
What does extra virgin mean?
Extra virgin olive oil is oil taken from olives by mechanical means alone, much like pressing a juice, without heat or chemicals, and it must have no taste defects. Nothing is refined out, so the aroma compounds that give a fresh oil its character stay in. Heat is kept out of the process because it breaks those compounds down.
