This week sees a celebration of our 8,000 year relationship with the humble olive. John Hillman discovers a festival that’s a perfect combination on delicious scenery and gorgeous food.
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Olive oil has been around a long time. Long before the Pharaohs, the Greeks and the Romans. Indeed, before any concept of civilization began the peoples of the Mediterranean relied on its properties as a food, body cleanser, perfume and lighting fuel.

It began life in the Eastern Mediterranean and was carried west by Greek and Phoenician sailors, having already underpinned the wealth of the Minoan Empire of Crete a thousand years before.

Such is its ongoing importance to the civilizations of the Mediterranean that Olive Oil continues to be found in the religious ceremonies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Today it underpins the regional economies of the Mediterranean – we consume 2.8 million tonnes of the stuff each year, with people from Australia to Iceland recognizing its enormous health benefits and willing to pay handsomely for their annual share.

It only makes sense, therefore, that we celebrate the annual harvest of each newest batch, which comes around the end of winter. (Hooray it’s the end of winter!). This takes place at the end of the first week of February in the medieval fortified town of Nyon in the Drôme Region of Southern France.

Known as The First Press Oil Festival, visitors to this delightfully picturesque town are invited to sit at enormous communal tables in the centre of Nyons, at the Place des Arcades, where they can rub toast in crushed garlic before dipping it in the newest batch of local olive oil, savouring the most genuine, fresh and delicious flavours of the Mediterranean.

Organised by a group known, entertainingly, as the Knights of the Olive Tree Confederation, the festival also includes folk music, dancing, concerts and special conferences. If you are heading through France this week then this is a culinary pit stop that’ll be well worth your gastronomic inspection.

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Image Credit: M. Minderhoud

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