April in the Olive Grove

​As Marlborough embraces Vintage 2026 its time to start thinking about the next big harvest in Marlborough – Olives
The weather has settled into autumn with lovely sunny days but cooler nights and shorter days.  That sunshine will help your olive ripen and bulk up that flesh and oil content.
 Preparing for Harvest
This month is your final chance to tidy up under your trees.  The withholding period for sprays/contaminants on or around your trees is 60 days prior to harvest so that means no spraying of weeds, no grazing under trees (because of droppings)i.e. sheep, horses, cattle and chickens.  Your Supplier Declaration requires disclosure before pressing.
Now is the time to think about what you require for harvest – people, equipment, collection and transport of olives and storage of oil.

1. Are you harvesting for your own pressing or will you join a combined pressing?  300kg is the minimum required for your own pressing.
2. Do you have enough people to harvest within a 24 hour time frame and get the crop to the Press in good condition?  Olives start to oxidise once picked and if they are damaged its even faster, so they should be pressed within 48 hours for best results.
3. Harvesting onto ground means it needs to be clear and accessible and covered with ground nets or tarpaulins to gather the fruit and avoid contamination. Hand raking the tree with gloved hands or hand rakes or using a long handled mechanical rake are the most popular methods.
4. What receptacles are you using to hold all your crop?  Can these be used to take away your pomace waste as well?  If so, they will need to be leak proof bins, buckets, crates.
5. Do you have enough oil receptacles?  Calculate an average 15% extraction rate i.e. 100kg of olives could return 15 litres of olive oil. Olive oil receptacles must be food grade plastic or stainless steel, they should be empty and clean and clearly labelled with plugs in place, not taps, which can be easily opened or knocked.

Make sure you have all this equipment clean, labelled and ready to go when your fruit is ripe.  Stockists have equipment available but can run out with high demand during harvest.
 
Assessing Olives for ripeness
Over the next few weeks your olives will begin to change colour from bright green through yellow green and then into purply green and ultimately black.
The fruit will change from hard, firm flesh to a softer feel, yielding when squeezed.
The colour of the inside pulp will also change from green/cream to a tinge of mauve which will ultimately track all the way from skin to pit.
The riper the fruit the higher the oil content and the more mellow the taste.  To achieve a balance between maturity/oil content and flavour be guided by the Colour Maturity Index below

​Trees seldom ripen evenly so a mixture of colours is to be expected and usually produces a good flavour profile.  Some green olives will give lower oil content but more bite, bitterness and brightness, some blacker olives will have more oil but a softer flavour and the purple olives will be somewhere in between. Nature often does the work for us with flavour blending so if your fruit is a mix of olives at 3 to 6 on the maturity index you should have good tasting oil and a reasonable oil percentage return.