Liquid gold
THE OLIVE ROUTE - A PERSONAL JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF THE MEDITERRANEAN<br>by Carol Drinkwater<br>Weidenfeld & Nicolson pp352, ISBN 0297847899
One of my most important ingredients in my Swiss kitchen is a much cherished bottle of Wardija extra virgin olive oil which is ceremoniously doled out on special occasions on baslerbrot, the closest kin to Maltese crusty bread, for a taste of home. Unlike the ubiquitous Italian and Spanish varieties, the Maltese "liquid gold", as Homer called it, is not so easily available or as widely known.
First cultivated by the Phoenicians in the 9th century BC and later extended by the Romans, olive groves once dominated the Maltese landscape. However, by the time the Knights of St John set up home in Malta, the islands were little more than arid, unproductive rocks. Fast forward to the 1990s when intrepid olive expert Sam Cremona started pressing his first oil from his own olive trees. Almost a decade later, the Wardija olive mill is churning out hundreds of tonnes of olive oil from indigenous groves around Malta and Gozo. Malta's olive oil industry is slowly getting back on its feet. And thanks to project PRIMO - the Project for the Revival of the Indigenous Maltese Olive - Maltese olive oil will one day be more visible on supermarket shelves and more commonplace in the kitchen.
20070324-lifestyle--bookfeature.jpgMr Cremona's efforts, and the ever growing enthusiasm of other olive farmers who are following his lead, have placed Malta back on the olive trail of the Mediterranean and have now been celebrated as part of Carol Drinkwater's The Olive Route.
For the people of the Mediterranean, olive oil is more than just a condiment. It represents the very heart and soul of our civilisation. A political pawn for centuries, representing wealth and social standing, olive oil has been hailed for its medicinal and even "magical" powers. The olive tree is a symbol of peace and abundance and Maltese fishermen are said to carry a fresh olive bough on board to keep the sea calm. Poetic as all this may sound, British actress-turned-olive farmer Carol Drinkwater proves this is not an overstatement.
Ms Drinkwater embarked on an eight-month epic journey around the Mediterranean in a bid to chart the mysterious roots of olive tree cultivation, pressing and trading. Her journey reads like a Rough Guide meets Indiana Jones adventure criss-crossing over 2,200 miles from Lebanon to Israel via Syria, Turkey, Malta, Tunisia, Libya, Greece, and Crete. An impressive itinerary, certainly not for the faint-hearted as Ms Drinkwater gives new meaning to journeying off the beaten track in a bid to track the ancient olive trail. The author is now working with Unesco to found an Olive Heritage Trail around the Mediterranean to "create peace within the region and honour the heritage of this sacred tree".
There is no doubting Ms Drinkwater's inexhaustible passion for her subject. Travelling mostly on her own to some of the remotest corners of the Mediterranean, she relied on a network of friends and contacts to portray a colourful picture of the olive trail as experienced through the people whose lives depend on this tree. She started by paying homage to the oldest living specimens, the 6,000-year-old "giants" of Bechealeh in Lebanon and ended her journey with a poignant tree-planting exercise with a group of Israelis and Palestinians in Israel as a symbol of "peace that supports two states for two peoples". During her stay in Malta, Ms Drinkwater visited the Wardija olive mill and toured some of the archaeological sites that bear testimony to Malta's oleiferous past.
In Ms Drinkwater's words, this unforgettable and sometimes dangerous journey was "constantly surprising, a once-in-a-lifetime experience". "Before I set off, I was hoping I might return with the key to a better life," she writes in her online newsletter, "a single, tangible treasure, some long-forgotten elixir pressed from olives. Every day along my route I found treasures and was constantly bowled over, but not by the one single nugget of truth I had hoped for, and I returned with more questions than I had set out with."
On one level The Olive Route is a good old-fashioned travelogue of a modern day grand tour of the Mediterranean, with a twist. But that's just the first superficial reading of the text. The book's subtitle - A Personal Journey to the Heart of the Mediterranean - prefaces the fact that this is not meant to be some cold scientific study or academic tome on botanic history. Far from it. This is, in fact, a fascinating, multi-dimensional biography of our home, the Mediterranean, as experienced through the lives of the myriad colourful characters that Ms Drinkwater meets on the way, lives that are intrinsically entwined with, and dependant on, the olive tree. Researched and written from the heart, this engaging book is a feast for all the senses. More hobz biz-zejt please.
• Adriana Bishop lives in Switzerland with her husband, son of two months, too many books and not enough bookshelves.
• A review copy of this title was supplied by Miller Distributors Limited, owners of Agenda bookshops.
First cultivated by the Phoenicians in the 9th century BC and later extended by the Romans, olive groves once dominated the Maltese landscape. However, by the time the Knights of St John set up home in Malta, the islands were little more than arid, unproductive rocks. Fast forward to the 1990s when intrepid olive expert Sam Cremona started pressing his first oil from his own olive trees. Almost a decade later, the Wardija olive mill is churning out hundreds of tonnes of olive oil from indigenous groves around Malta and Gozo. Malta's olive oil industry is slowly getting back on its feet. And thanks to project PRIMO - the Project for the Revival of the Indigenous Maltese Olive - Maltese olive oil will one day be more visible on supermarket shelves and more commonplace in the kitchen.
20070324-lifestyle--bookfeature.jpgMr Cremona's efforts, and the ever growing enthusiasm of other olive farmers who are following his lead, have placed Malta back on the olive trail of the Mediterranean and have now been celebrated as part of Carol Drinkwater's The Olive Route.
For the people of the Mediterranean, olive oil is more than just a condiment. It represents the very heart and soul of our civilisation. A political pawn for centuries, representing wealth and social standing, olive oil has been hailed for its medicinal and even "magical" powers. The olive tree is a symbol of peace and abundance and Maltese fishermen are said to carry a fresh olive bough on board to keep the sea calm. Poetic as all this may sound, British actress-turned-olive farmer Carol Drinkwater proves this is not an overstatement.
Ms Drinkwater embarked on an eight-month epic journey around the Mediterranean in a bid to chart the mysterious roots of olive tree cultivation, pressing and trading. Her journey reads like a Rough Guide meets Indiana Jones adventure criss-crossing over 2,200 miles from Lebanon to Israel via Syria, Turkey, Malta, Tunisia, Libya, Greece, and Crete. An impressive itinerary, certainly not for the faint-hearted as Ms Drinkwater gives new meaning to journeying off the beaten track in a bid to track the ancient olive trail. The author is now working with Unesco to found an Olive Heritage Trail around the Mediterranean to "create peace within the region and honour the heritage of this sacred tree".
There is no doubting Ms Drinkwater's inexhaustible passion for her subject. Travelling mostly on her own to some of the remotest corners of the Mediterranean, she relied on a network of friends and contacts to portray a colourful picture of the olive trail as experienced through the people whose lives depend on this tree. She started by paying homage to the oldest living specimens, the 6,000-year-old "giants" of Bechealeh in Lebanon and ended her journey with a poignant tree-planting exercise with a group of Israelis and Palestinians in Israel as a symbol of "peace that supports two states for two peoples". During her stay in Malta, Ms Drinkwater visited the Wardija olive mill and toured some of the archaeological sites that bear testimony to Malta's oleiferous past.
In Ms Drinkwater's words, this unforgettable and sometimes dangerous journey was "constantly surprising, a once-in-a-lifetime experience". "Before I set off, I was hoping I might return with the key to a better life," she writes in her online newsletter, "a single, tangible treasure, some long-forgotten elixir pressed from olives. Every day along my route I found treasures and was constantly bowled over, but not by the one single nugget of truth I had hoped for, and I returned with more questions than I had set out with."
On one level The Olive Route is a good old-fashioned travelogue of a modern day grand tour of the Mediterranean, with a twist. But that's just the first superficial reading of the text. The book's subtitle - A Personal Journey to the Heart of the Mediterranean - prefaces the fact that this is not meant to be some cold scientific study or academic tome on botanic history. Far from it. This is, in fact, a fascinating, multi-dimensional biography of our home, the Mediterranean, as experienced through the lives of the myriad colourful characters that Ms Drinkwater meets on the way, lives that are intrinsically entwined with, and dependant on, the olive tree. Researched and written from the heart, this engaging book is a feast for all the senses. More hobz biz-zejt please.
• Adriana Bishop lives in Switzerland with her husband, son of two months, too many books and not enough bookshelves.
• A review copy of this title was supplied by Miller Distributors Limited, owners of Agenda bookshops.