Why harvest early?

An Olive harvest at Pendleton Olive Estate begins with the change of season from the warm summer months to the crisp, cool months of early Autumn and into Winter. As the leaves begin to change on beautiful deciduous trees and grape vines in South Australia, that is when we are busy harvesting olives. Our olives are plump, juicy, fresh and ready during this season.

We harvest our olives early to capture the pure flavours and all the health benefits of a fresh olive. Unripe olives have significantly higher polyphenol content than those of ripe olives. Polyphenols are a powerful antioxidant and provide anti-inflammatory properties that have been linked to reducing the risk of heart disease. Olive oil not only tastes good, but it does wonders for your body!

Harvesting olives early is a difficult process. So much so that other growers sometimes choose not to harvest early because it is that much harder. Harder to get the fruit off the trees, more time consuming and more costly. However, leaving the olives on trees for too long puts the fruit at risk of frost damage which can cause them to shrink, reduce the oil content and affect the taste and quality of the fruit.

This is why at Pendleton Olive Estate, we persist with our early harvest philosophy to ensure that our olives are at their prime when harvested. Harvesting the olives at this stage, and cold pressed in our state of the art olive mill, means we always produce premium Extra Virgin Olive Oil – Extra Virgin Olive Oil that is full of rich flavour, loaded with antioxidants and is fresh. Fresh is always best.

Discover our range of early harvest olive oil here.