Olive production in Mallorca is reduced due to the island’s geo-climatic characteristics (the earth, the indented orography, the irregular precipitations and the heightened age of the Mallorcan olive trees), that make it apt for the manufacture of a quality oil.

All these factors, together with the variety of olives present in Mallorca (mallorquina, empeltre, picual and arbequina), give differentiated oils as a result: of a sweet type if they are obtained from mature olives (smooth flavour), or rather of a fruity type, when they are obtained from green olives (sour and spicy flavours).

Olive tree cultivation, and the olive’s production and consumption have a great tradition on the island of Mallorca. Traditionally, the oil of Mallorca has been recognized and appreciated both for the island’s inhabitants and for the area’s citizens which historically have kept commercial relationships, especially with the south of France.

Its history dates back to the era in which the Phoenetians and Greeks introduced the olive tree into the Iberic peninsula, and from there it arrived in Mallorca. In the times of the Aragon crown (XIII century) the oil of Mallorca was already being exported to the North of Africa, and in the mid XV century it was already a product that was exported in a regular and continual basis from the island, especially from the Puerto de Soller. In the XVI century, the cultivation and production of oil progressed and the techniques improved up to the point of constituting the main source of riches of many of Mallorca’s ranches that possessed their own oil press for a long time.