While our modern society promotes high productivity and profitability, the Mas Fabre de Laferriere prefers using traditional methods for producing a particularly elegant and subtle olive oil.
Three factors influence the productivity: the quantity of fruits per tree, the amount of trees per hectare and the quantity of oil produced per olive. Huile des Orgues has preferred quality to quantity. Here are the reasons why.
In the intensive production model, all these parameters are optimized, for instance planting the tree in hedges, using machines to harvest the fruits (like for wine production) and selecting varieties of olive producing a lot of oil. As a result, trees in this kind of intensive production get exhausted and have to be replaced every 10 years, while in a traditional culture, as you know, an olive tree can produce for thousands of years!
Noël and Lily Fabre have made the choice of traditional production, in harmony with nature, and with trees planted at 7 meters from each other to better get the sun. The Roussillon is backed by the Pyrenées (see on the photo the Canigou mountain), a very windy area (see the orientation of the trees) and very sunny.
The main variety of the property Laferrière, the Oliviere, requires 10 kg of olive to make a liter of oil, that is twice more than other varieties, but when we taste the Huile des Orgues, we understand the value of our agricultural choices![:]
