Sultana and I-15: the experimental oil from a Serón olive mill that can barely keep up with orders
Almazara La Zalea, in Serón, is harvesting the first crop of two experimental olive varieties, Sultana and I-15, and demand is already exceeding its forecasts.
Automatic translation: this article was translated with artificial intelligence from the original in Spanish. Read the original
They were planted sixteen months ago and today they are already producing oil. Almazara La Zalea, an olive mill in Serón, has harvested the first crop of two experimental olive varieties, christened Sultana and I-15, and the response has gone beyond what was expected at the mill itself, as La Voz de Almería has reported.
Behind the project is Luis Segura, head of La Zalea and of Segura Jamones de Serón. “There is so much demand for the new oil that we hardly know how to meet it,” Segura admits in the Almería newspaper, which speaks of a record harvest on these experimental farms in the municipality. He is receiving a lot of orders, and the interest goes further: “There are lots of large groups that are very interested in trying it,” he adds.
The traditional olive tree, harvested in a different way
The trees are already more than two and a half metres tall. As for the fruit, Segura highlights its size: “It has a calibre like a traditional Picual olive.” And this is how he sums up the idea: “It’s as if we had planted the traditional olive tree, but in a super-modern system for harvesting.”
That said, at La Zalea they are not counting their chickens. Segura admits that beginnings always bring uncertainty and warns that it will be necessary to wait three, four or five years to know whether what look like advantages today remain so, because there is still no experience with these varieties. For now, in his words, “the truth is that the start has been satisfactory”.
An olive mill at the foot of the Filabres
La Zalea is in the area of the same name, on an estate at the foot of the Sierra de los Filabres. Its microclimate makes it possible to bring the harvest forward and extract the oil on the same day, according to the company’s listing on Turismo Serón, Serón Town Council’s tourism website. The estate and the mill belong to Explotaciones Agrícolas de Serón, which controls the whole process, from the tree to the bottle.
In a village of 2,151 residents, according to the INE, Spain’s National Statistics Institute, every project that sows a future in the countryside counts. And in Serón they know it: the town council itself has shared La Zalea’s story on its website.
