It seems everyone loves olives these days. While people might have once only been familiar with canned black olives or the pimento stuffed versions in martinis, most local grocery stores now carry a wide variety of olives at “olive bars.”
So what makes Healthy Harvests olives different?
Unique Heirloom Variety
Both our green and black olives are Koutsouralia olives, an heirloom variety of Kalamata olive that account for less than four percent of olive trees in Greece.
Farm-to-table
They have been grown with care and picked by hand for four generations on a 160-year-old organic estate in Sparta, Greece. We have sourced directly from this family for nearly 10 years. No distributor, no middle men. Just one small family business supporting another. Also, we sell out of each year’s crop, so you receive only the most recent harvest.
Simple Ingredients
Our olives contain no additives or preservatives and have never been processed with lye. Our green olives contain only lemon juice, spring water, sea salt, wild savory, and organic garlic or wild Greek oregano. Our black olives are brined in vinegar, spring water, and sea salt.
Both the lemon and red wine vinegar brines are made from organic fruit grown on the same estate, and the mineral-rich sea salt is hand harvested from the Mediterranean Sea.
Nutrient Dense
Not to mention, at 6% sea salt, they’re considerably lower sodium than store bought varieties. Cold brining in sea salt ferments the olives, meaning they require no refrigeration.
But perhaps the biggest difference is that because our olives are completely raw and unpasteurized, they still contain live active cultures from fermentation that help your body’s digestion.
Most olives sold in stores must be pasteurized, or boiled at up to 280 degrees to kill dangerous bacteria. However, the heat also damages the healthy bacteria and most of the nutrients.
Since our olives are only available at farmer’s markets, we have the unique opportunity to offer them completely unprocessed. In their original state, they are full of free radical fighting antioxidants, healthy fats that protect your brain and keep you full, and other vital nutrients like vitamin E, iron, copper and calcium.
Life-changing Flavor
Finally, our olives are recently harvested, hand-picked when perfectly ripe, raw and unpasteurized, low-sodium, and contain pits, which all add up to out-of-this-world flavor you would never find in stores. Our customers tell us on a weekly basis that our olives are the best they’ve ever tasted.
Try for yourself and share your thoughts in the comments below!