Local olive varieties and France are known for their sensory qualities, if not for their yields.
“France is not necessarily known as an olive oil-producing country, so we have a big job ahead and that’s the work we do at France Olive. We communicate about this diversity of flavors and particularities of the French production,” said Laurent Bélorgey, president of France Olive, the inter-professional association of the olive sector in France.
“France is not necessarily known as an olive oil-producing country, so we have a big job ahead and that’s the work we do at France Olive. We communicate about this diversity of flavors and particularities of the French production,” said Laurent Bélorgey, president of France Olive, the inter-professional association of the olive sector in France.
“We had a production of around 6,000 tons last year, and this year we achieved the level of 5,500 tones,” he added.
France is the sixth-largest producer of olive oil in Europe, after Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Cyprus, according to figures provided by the International Olive Council.
Following the example set by the wine sector, olive oil production in France adopted the system of protected designations of origin — or Appellation d’Origine Protegée (AOPs), by the mid-90s.
Since then, eight designations of origin were created, covering almost every region along the French Mediterranean coast.
The size of those protected areas varies from the 16 villages included within the limits of the Vallée des Baux — one of the smallest protected areas — to the 434 belonging to the AOC of Provence.
“We often say that there are some 20,000 olive producers in France. Nevertheless, that figure ranges from the small producer who has just a few olive trees in his garden and who takes his olives to the local cooperative, to the professional who cultivates 20 or 30 hectares. However, most of the producers own small properties. There are few producers with more than 50 hectares. The majority has an average of 10,” Bélorgey told us.
France’s bid for its AOPs turned out to be one of its olive oil’s main assets — as it helped the country to preserve the particularities of its cultivars.
However, this system also brought some of the sector’s key challenges. More