For many years the Drakenstein Valley has been synonymous with the production of excellent wines.
But few people know that this area was the birthplace of the olive industry in South Africa, and today is still the front runner in this industry.
Well-known Wellingtonner Piet Cillié, later known as Piet California, was the true pioneer of the olive industry.
The Cillié family farmed on the farm Rhebokskloof, on the horseshoe in Wellington. Cillié was at the forefront of the fruit industry in the late 1800s – so much so the government sent him to California in 1893 to investigate the successful fruit farming there.
Among citrus trees and other “strange fruit” that he brought back were olive trees.
Cillié was very enthusiastic about the future of olive farming, and himself planted hundreds of trees on his farm.
But the olive industry only gained real enthusiasm and momentum with the arrival of Rafaello Costa in the late 1800s, who planted olive groves in Newlands, Cape Town. Following him later were his younger brothers Ferdinando and Carlo, the former continuing the dream of cultivating olives trees on South African soil.
His endeavours led his later to buying a farm in Paarl East were the climate is very similar to the Mediterrenean climate of Italy, also with wild olienhout olives growing all over the Drakenstein Valley. Ferdinando called the farm Nervi, after his hometown in Italy and this is where the true heart of the olive industry began.
He imported olive tree twigs of the best cultivars available in Italy, which was used to graft onto the wild Olienhout rootstock here, which was the formal start of creating local olive trees.
In 1936, Ferdinando imported the first hydraulic oil press from Italy to South Africa to produce the first olive oil in the country.
His son Phillip joined him, but Nino, who preferred the wine industry, established himself as an icon of this industry at Monis Winery in Paarl.
But later, he too, with the help of Ferdinando, went into olive production having his own farm, named “Lavalle”, 4 km east of Nervi, on the foothills of Du Toit’s Kloof Pass, where he started with olive cultivation.
His Buffet Olives products were to become one of the “Big Four” in South African olive processes.
Today, the 180 ha home of Buffet Olives is the largest table olive farm in the country, with 50 000 trees and harvesting between 1 300 and 1 600 tons of olives a year.
The main cultivars grown at Buffet Olives are Mission, Manzanilla, Barouni, Kalamata and Nocellara del Belice
Here for the past 50 years olives have been handpicked at optimal ripeness, naturally cured and packed for the South African consumer.
And the Buffet Olives range has grown by leaps and bounds, from table olives, including an array of stuffed and marinated olives, to all sorts of tasty tapanades.
In 2017, devastation hit the farm when hundreds of its trees were severely damaged in a fire on the Drakenstein Mountains.
Most of the trees have, however, been brought back to life and this year the farm is once again in full production.
