Olea europea Negrette - Olive tree

The Negrette Olive is an ancient variety native to Gard, widely cultivated in the south of France. The tree has medium vigour and requires little pruning. It resists cold weather very well and thrives in dry and rocky soils. This olive tree is capable of bearing fruit 2 or 3 years after planting. It is an early variety, which is also less susceptible to alternate bearing. The tree is self-fertile and does not need to be pollinated by another olive tree to bear fruit. Its pointed olives yield a golden and mild oil, renowned for its delicate and complex flavour with aromas of apple, hazelnut, tomato, and artichoke. However, the oil yield from the fruit is low (20%). The olives are harvested at full ripeness once fully black, from the beginning of November to December.

The expansion of the olive tree is linked to the establishment of the Mediterranean climate: this is the major constraint for its cultivation. The domestication of the olive tree is believed to have taken place six millennia ago. Olive trees are long-lived trees. The oldest olive tree in the world is now 3,000 years old. The Negrette Olive, known since the 18th century, is also known by the names of moureau, mourette, mourescalle. More recently, in the 19th century, this variety was known as "early olive" or "early-ripening olive".

The olive tree is a highly branched tree, with a knotty trunk, hard and dense wood and cracked brown bark.
The ovate, elongated leaves are carried by a short, quite tough petiole. They are entire, with rolled edges, shiny dark green on the upper surface, and light green silvery with a prominent midvein on the lower surface. The foliage is evergreen and its leaves are constantly renewed. The juvenile leaves of Negrette are very small, resembling those of wild olive, while its adult leaves are larger. If the adult leaves are slow to form, prune the tree very low and stake the new shoots to make them grow vertically.
The small cream-white flowers are clustered in small clusters of 10 to 20. They appear in the axils of the leaves in April-May, on the previous year's wood. The Negrette Olive is self-fertile. The presence of another tree nearby is not necessary for the pollination of its flowers. It produces pointed, fleshy olives, with smooth skin, changing from green to wine red, purple, and then black. They mature early, colouring from November. Negrette olives are mainly used for oil. It takes 7 kg of olives to extract 1 litre of oil.

Green or black olives are not consumed directly from the tree. They must first be prepared to remove any bitterness. There are many methods for preserving green table olives. All are based on the same principle, in 3 steps. 1/ Remove the bitterness, with a caustic soda bath, a quick solution, or an ash lye, a more traditional and slower method. 2/ Rinse. 3/ Brining with or without fermentation. For black olives, removing bitterness is not necessary.

Table olives are consumed once prepared. They can also be used to produce olive oil.