What do on holidays the Ralda Brothers? They visit olive trees!

While Alfredo was spending Xmas time in Godall, taking care of our olive trees and attending the demands of our friends and customers at the online shop, his brother Pierre was in a trip to Argentina. Together with his family, Pierre spent New Year’s at the Cordoba Province (not to confound with the Andalusian Cordoba), surrounded by olive trees plantations of his brother in law, Martin, at the Traslasierra Valley.

Argentina, better known for its production of beef and its large fields of wheat and soya at the Pampa, is also an emerging player in the olive oil sector. With a growing 30.000 yearly tons, the country ranks the 10th place in the world’s list of producers, and is the first outside the Mediterranean area. Now Argentina is reaching around 1% of the total olive oil produced in the world.

During the “New World” colonization, the Spanish introduced the olive trees in Argentina. Then the successive waves of immigrants coming from Italy and Mediterranean during the XIX and XX centuries refined the techniques. Today we can find the majority of the olive plantations at the provinces of Mendoza, San Juan, Catamarca, Córdoba and La Rioja, in an extension of 70.000 Ha. However, if it were necessary, the production could easily grow by putting new and still available lands into work.

In our case, Martin and his wife, Veronica, bought 42 ha. of land in 2005 (in Argentina, everything is big) in order to plant trees from different varieties: arbequina, picual, barnea, manzanilla, frantoio, corantina and arauco. The last one is the autochthonous Argentinian olive tree, resulting from the mixture of older varieties brought from Europe.

Soon they amounted 12.500 young olive trees and built their own mill, where the extra virgin olive oil “Sierra Pura” is prepared. As you will see in their webpage (www.sierrapura.com.ar), today they have 6 varieties of olive oil, from which three are monovarietal: arbequina, manzanilla, and their autochthonous arauco.

Entrepreneurs and highly creative, Martin and Vero offer their visitors of Traslasierra Valley (a place full of picturesque villages, small hills and virgin spots) to have the opportunity to visit the plantation, taste their olive oils, do a trekking and, for those “slow-life” lovers, to sleep at the Sierra Pura Suite surrounded by the olive trees. We can confirm that the 6 days spent at Sierra Pura were so relaxing and incredible.

In a few words: if you ever can visit Argentina, you MUST go to the Cordoba Province and call on the Sierra Pura plantation. Martin and Vero will be happy to welcome you. It will be an unforgettable experience.