Kettle Hill Grove · est. 1998
Olive Branch
A small family grove and a one-mill pressing room. We pick by hand in October, press the same afternoon, and pour it until the last tin goes.
2026 pressing · 4–18 October
About the grove
Four hundred trees on a south-facing slope, most of them Arbequina with a stubborn old block of Picual at the top of the hill. Nothing is bought in and nothing is blended with anyone else's fruit.
The mill runs for two weeks a year. Everything on this page — bottles, visiting days, picking days, the monthly letter — comes out of those two weeks.
The harvest
Come to the grove
From the kitchen
The notes
Where each link above lands. Short, and written the week it happened.
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01 · Harvest
Arbequina, first press
Picked green in the first week and milled within four hours, so it comes out cloudy and smells like cut grass. Drink it early — by March it has settled into something rounder and much quieter.
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02 · Harvest
Picual reserve
The top block is older, drier and slower, and the fruit carries far more polyphenol. It catches the back of the throat on the first taste. Good on beans, lentils and anything that needs an edge.
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03 · Harvest
Three-litre kitchen tin
Same oil, later in the run, in a tin that keeps light out properly. Meant to be decanted into a small bottle on the counter and kept somewhere dark the rest of the time.
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04 · Visit
Mill days
During pressing fortnight the mill room is open in the afternoons. You will see the fruit go in dusty and come out as oil about forty minutes later, and you will taste it before it has cooled.
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05 · Visit
The long table
One lunch a month, laid out under the old trees at the bottom of the slope. Bread, new oil, tomatoes while they last, and whatever else the season has decided on.
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06 · Visit
Picking days
Hand-picking means nets, rakes and a lot of people. No experience needed and no obligation to be quick — holding a net edge steady all morning is genuinely useful work.
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07 · Kitchen
Keeping oil well
Light and heat undo good oil faster than time does. Keep it closed, away from the hob, and out of clear glass on a sunny shelf. Open bottles are at their best within about two months.
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08 · Kitchen
Six things to pour it on
Warm bread, white beans, roast carrots, plain yoghurt, a soft-boiled egg, and vanilla ice cream with a pinch of salt. The last one is not a joke and we will not be moved on it.
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09 · Kitchen
Letter from the grove
A single page each month. What the weather did, what got pruned, how the fruit is setting, and which bottles are close to running out. No offers, no countdowns.
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10 · Elsewhere
Where else you will find it
A handful of neighbourhood grocers and two restaurants take a few cases each season. When the grove sells out, they usually have a little longer.