Rooting for olive oil

Lovers of Maltese food will have a field day at the annual Olive Oil Feast at Wardija tomorrow.

The feast is gradually establishing itself on the calendar of Sam Cremona who organises it every year and who has made it his mission to put Malta on the map of olive oil producers.

The event will take place at Mr Cremona's residence - Wild Roses, Triq il-Madonna tal-Abbundanti - a stone's throw away from Castello dei Baroni. The open day will be held even in inclement weather as the activity can be held under a large tent.

St Peter's Foundation, an organisation of amateur fishermen who raise money to buy fish for children's institutes, orphanages and old people's homes, will be offering marinated lampuki in a warm ftira for a small donation.

Zebbiegh and Mgarr farmers will be displaying their produce ranging from honey to cheeselets, pastes, sun dried tomatoes and wine.

"It will be a feast of Maltese products," Mr Cremona said.

"Earlier in the season, the yield of oil from olives was about 10 to 12 per cent but now it's about 17 per cent. People are learning that the later they pick olives, the more oil the olives are likely to contain."

Mr Cremona is still pushing for the revival of the indigenous Maltese olive - in what is known as the Primo project.

"We already have the first saplings from indigenous Maltese olives and we are planning to get expertise to set up a professional grafting lab with the help of EU funds. We need to have about 20,000 trees producing olives to be able to register a DOP (Denominazione di Origine Protetta) which would allow us to sell the oil as a unique brand of olive oil harvested from indigenous Maltese olives," he said.

Saplings grafted from 1,800-year-old olive trees found at Bidnija, which are resistant to insects and other pests, are being nurtured and will serve as a basis from which to graft more trees.

"I know there is also interest abroad for such trees, but not before we have planted 100,000 such trees locally would I be considering this," he said.

Part-time farmers who had little return from their fields were showing a lot of interest in planting such trees.

In his efforts to put Malta on the olive tree map, Mr Cremona himself is making the news after he met with a British author who has a summer house in the south of France and who is herself an olive grower.

Carol Drinkwater, who was in Malta last year working on her recently released book The Olive Route, speaks at length of Mr Cremona's endeavours to make the olive tree again one of the commonest trees in Malta.