Olive groves are the living history of our ancestors – trees that gave generations olives and oil for food, wood for heating and oil for lighting. Planted on barren, stony land and surrounded by stone walls an olive grove is not only a miracle of nature for having survived the milennia, but a testament to the blood, sweat and tears of the men and women who stubbornly struggled to create and sustain it.
Most of our groves contain very mature trees. Some are even more than 1,000 years old. As a small, family business, we plant and grow with nature as our guide, relying only on the soil, rainfall and crushed olive pits, dropped fruit, dried leaves, rotting branches to nurture our harvest.
The Olynthia olive groves are planted with native Croatian varieties that you can only find in this part of the world. Because Solta is a small island, and creating a grove out of such stony land is so difficult, our olive groves are also small – sometimes just a dozen or so trees.
The most widespread variety we grow is Oblica and it remains a symbol of Dalmatia. It is famed for its excellent ability to grow with very small amounts of water and its fruit is good for both eating and oil.
The second most common variety is Soltanka (literally, a lady from Solta, also referred to as Levatinka). This variety requires more water and better fields for planting, but it yields a more abundant crop. The success of this variety is so well recognized that it has spread to other Dalmatian islands as well as to the mainland.
