The Grove

Setting Up

Kilrae is a 13.5 acre property, bought by Rob and Margaret Irwin as a parcel of bare land on the outskirts of Masterton at the end of 1993. A departure from our surgical and teaching careers, it was to provide us with a change of direction and potential income as we headed towards retirement.

The land had horticultural potential with a sandy loam soil type on an old river flood plain, a commercial orchard was close by. We had a year or two running cattle then, disillusioned by one wicked, greedy, and unconfineable steer, set the land up to grow olives.

Our new house and new grove were developed synchronously, preceded by a 3 bay shed, and followed by a hothouse and a 2 bay shadehouse. The first olive plantings were done on Labour Day 1996, with the help of family and hospital friends, and more trees arrived that December. By the time the next major planting took place on Labour Day 1998 we had upskilled on propagation and so mostly used our own trees and have continued with all subsequent tree replacements.

Almost all of the original plantings have been replaced, some more than once. The Barnea, Manzanillo, South Australian Verdale, and Nabali varieties proved unsuitable for the area and have removed. Our tree lines are now Frantoio, Leccino, and Koroneiki with a few other varieties. These trees are more disease resistant and are consistent croppers, the oil is of high quality with the characteristic robust Tuscan flavour and has been of gold medal standard 2006 and 2007.

Propagation

Even before moving to Kilrae we had been dabbling in propagation as we had a tunnel house. We grew some cuttings from friends trees and shared the result ending up with 70 each. Some of our best trees, Supers, (Frantoio type from a tree outside a Blenheim supermarket), survive today. At our most active we took around 3000 cuttings annually and from these managed to get about 700 trees to a saleable size. Lack of demand eventually curtailed this business and now we just propagate enough for our own grove.

Problems

Wind: As the grove has developed this has become less of a problem as the trees are now providing their own protection. A policy of radical pruning too has left the wind with less tree sail and so less leverage. Our shade house still requires re-skinning periodically which is not surprising as we expect 100 – 120kph gales annually.

Frost: This has become less of a problem because the Italian varieties seem more resistant, however at harvest time, usually at the start of June, vigilance is necessary. Late Spring frosts may also decrease fruit set.

Disease: Fungal disease is ever present, peacock spot is endemic but some varietals are more resistant to it than others. We also had 3 bad years with what turned out to be bacterial blast but this has not reappeared to any great extent. Healthy trees are less affected.

Disease, frost and wind resistance has had a large bearing on the direction Kilrae olive grove has taken over the last few years.

Harvest

The grove began producing oil of a consistently high quality in 2000 and in 2002 we harvested our first commercial crop of 2 tonnes. Each year the crop has been similar because of the varietal replacement programme but as the trees mature we anticipate increasing volumes of fruit. To date the harvests have mostly been done by us with the help of our friends and family. We have a designated 'harvest day' where we gather a number of willing workers on a Saturday to have a fun day with food provided, and wine after the work is done. "Gossip in the grove" is always interesting! Mechanisation is taking over with the acquisition of pneumatic rakes to ease the workload. We now have a compressor and 1 Campagnola rake, and we hope to have another for the 2008 harvest.

Pressing and Bottling

The pressing and bottling process is the final stage of the process. Pressing is done at TOP (The Olive Press), our major Wairarapa commercial press. This is located just a kilometre away and so the olives get from tree to press in quick time. We store our oil in stainless steel containers under Nitrogen until it settles which takes at least 6 weeks. After bottling, the batches are tested. To be classed as extra virgin olive oil by the IOOC (International Olive Oil Council), the product needs to have an acidity level of less than 0.8%, and a peroxide level less than 15, a standard we are easily achieving, (our acidity is usually less than 0,1%) !.The oil is also tested by a gustatory panel. We use 200ml and 375ml bottles and do everything ourselves except for the pressing.