Olive
Adam felt a pain in his flesh and complained to God. Thereupon, Gibrail sent the olive tree and said: eat the fruit of this tree, in it all pain has its remedy.
About 10.000 years ago, animal domestication and cultivation of basic crops began in the lands called "The Fertile Crescent"(*) in the eastern Mediterranean. As to the implantation and cultivation of the olive tree, it is believed that the Semitic races who lived in this region were the first to do it, sometime between the fourth and the third millenia BC. Olive tree culture began in the eastern Mediterranean, but subsequently spread to all the Mediterranean basin and came to have an important part in the economy of all the great civilisations of the region. So much so that, the powerful Athenian citizen Solon (ca. 650 BC) decreed the first law to protect olive trees which stipulated that no more than two in each olive tree yard can be cut in a year. As the French writer George Duhamel (d. 1966) said: "The Mediterranean ends where the olive gives up growing."
Even though cultivation is possible between the 35th and 45th paralels of each hemisphere, % 95 of the existing 750 million olive trees are grown in the countries around the Mediterranean Sea. Spain is the world leader with one third of the total world production, followed by Italy. Our country alternately ranks third or fourth, depending on the years with or without harvest. In the 2007-2008 season olive oil output dropped dramatically by P and consequently olives for consumption counted for % 61 of Turkey's total exports (164 million dollars) in olive products. New plantations give us hope that both domestic consumption and exports will reach a higher level.
Of our country's total olive production, % 70 is used for oil making and 0 is consumed "at table". As people of old say, "Olives for oil grows in the mountains, olives for the table in plateaus", so some regions produce more olives for oil, and others more for table. For instance, % 20 of the pruduction in the Aegean region accounts for olives "for table", whereas in the Marmara region the figure is % 90. Of all olives for table use in Turkey, % 40 is produced in Marmara, which mostly consists of the pickled fruit of a special variety: the Gemlik olive tree. That is why for the supply olives for our restaurant we rely on a family enterprise settled in Gemlik, the owners of which are three generations of olive cultivators. And that is why our olives are properly processed (***) and have a certain calibration (**).
Here is how the Gemlik Commercial Industrial Chamber replies to the question "Why Gemlik olives?":
- Because Gemlik olives have a taste and nature absolutely unique that no other product in the world matches.
- Geographical and climatic conditions, cultivation methods and other factors account for the Gemlik variety's distinctive flavor. This has been proved by a Registered Geographical Sign.
- It is the choicest olive in the world and the most famous of all the many varieties grown in Turkey.
- It has a natural black color, it darkens on the tree and is not harvested until it turns totally black. It comes to our tables as it is given to us by nature, without additive substances.
- Its seed is tiny, its skin thin; it is fleshy.
- It is simply pickled in salted water and fermented. It has a long shelf life.
(*) The Fertile Crescent is the unique stretch of land extending from the rivers Tigris and Euphrates down to Irak, including territories from the southeastern Anatolian Region of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Israel. It has very favorable climatic and environmetal conditions for agriculture, but this is not the only reason why agriculture was born there: another not less important reason is that it is a "central zone of plant genes". And the 350 m wide 500 km long strip of land encircled with fences and land mines means that this gene center is protected in situ. Whether this valuable land should or should not be leased to foreign enterprises following a build-operate-transfer model is also to be evaluated in this perspective.
(**) Calibration of the olive fruit: olives for table consumption are passed through sieves and classified in groups as 200-230, 230-260, 290-320 according to the number of seeds per kilogram. The calibrations with smaller figures (less seeds per kilogram) are preferred on account of their largeness.
(***) The processing of olives consists of the fermentation of oily black olives in salted water for 6 moths, at the end of which they turn black. Some producers bypass this process by a 2 months' pasteurisation and save 4-5 months' time.
