You have to be very brave to undertake in general, but more so in the countryside. From where some flee, leaving towns and empty lands, others arrive loaded with dreams and good will, facing plagues, floods or droughts, among other challenges that nature imposes, not to mention the numbers that must be done to make the calculations. Even so, some people are encouraged, guided by the love of the land and the desire to do things well. Today I would like to tell the story of the Vázquez Alarcón family who, with roots from Jaén, Córdoba, Huelva and Cádiz, acquired, in the mid-90s, a four-hectare plot of land in the municipality of Medina Sidonia, in Cádiz, the Olivar del Lentisquillo. Where there was an uncultivated field, they took the seedlings of their family’s olive trees, in Jaén, whose olive-growing tradition dates back 300 years. The first tree was planted in 1994, three years later the first harvest arrived, a small one, for their own consumption, but since then the care of the land, enthusiasm and perseverance have on occasion provided them with a harvest of up to 24,000 kilos of olives. The picual variety grows in this area of eastern wind and extreme heat in the summers with a softer and more aromatic flavor than usual. The determination of this family to bring excellence throughout the process has achieved medals, ecological certification and customers hooked on their oil in England, Switzerland or Germany, and of course in Spain. The pretty girl is the 500 milliliter glass bottle, but I know that at the beginning of the season they put some bottles of unfiltered oil on sale for a few days, with an intense green color and a flavor that turns your palate upside down. We’ll see what the 2025 vintage holds. The best pantry in Spain is made of these stories, really. To the entrepreneurs in the field, everyone, thank you.
