The humble olive, with its 6000 years of history, is now making its mark as a part of the future of the region.

With two harvests in the bottle, and the third due to start in May, Anna and Sam Stranger of Straniero Olive Oils, (Straniero is Italian for Stranger), are looking forward to giving the trees a good shaking.

The 1000 olive trees on their Canowindra property Minoru consist of approximately 600 of the correggiola variety, a mass of manzanillo and a fraction of frantoio.

The four hectare planting was established in 1998 and produced enough fruit for pressing to be commercially viable in 2006.

The fruit is squeezed within 24 hours to prevent fermentation. It’s this dedication to quality that has produced an oil that picked up a bronze medal at the 2007 Sydney Royal Fine Food Show.

Billimari Olive Processors cold extracted a total of 2000 litres of extra virgin oil from the 2006 harvest.

Unfortunately the drought knocked the plants back a touch in 2007 with 1700 litres being squeezed from the harvest.

Olives grow on the second year wood and the current falls of rain will set the trees up for an even better harvest in 2009, with another 2000 litres expected.

The resulting flavour of each pressing is determined by a number of factors including the varieties chosen and the mix of black and green fruit.

“You can produce an oil made exclusively from black olives,” said Mrs Stranger.

“But the green olives add a bit of pepperiness to the blend and really help give it a bit of freshness.”