Equally if not more impressive is the nearby site of Iż-Żebbuġ tal-Bidnija. This grove of 20 bidni olive trees, like a den of dozing grandfathers, is believed to be the oldest olive grove in the country, dating to Roman times and perhaps earlier. The gnarled and twisted trees, averaging some five to eight meters in height, still bear fruit, though the olives are too small for harvesting. The Maltese government designated them as national monuments, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (
unesco) named them groves of “Antiquarian Importance.”
Under the Byzantines, Malta continued to thrive as a trading center and source of olive oil. Towns and villages with names referencing olives and olive oil production include Gasri, which takes its name from
ghasar, “to squeeze” (as in olive pressing). Żebbuġ is Maltese for “wild olives,” and Birżebbuġa translates as “olive well.” The city of Iż-Żejtun, site of an annual olive festival, derives its name directly from
zaytun, the Arabic word for olive.
Though olives and olive oil figure prominently in the traditional Arab Mediterranean diet, Malta’s Arab colonizers were more partial to growing almonds, blood oranges (which they brought from Sicily) and cotton, for which Malta was known in antiquity and which continued to be an important crop up to early modern times. Popular legends say the Arabs actually cut down olive trees to use the wood for ships and clear the land for cotton, but modern historians mostly regard such accounts as exaggerated. Another legend, also likely apocryphal, holds that the Arabs attached special value to Malta’s indigenous bidni olives because their slightly curved shape bore resemblance to a crescent moon.
Following the Arabs came the Crusader knights; after them came the French; and then the British, who ruled the island from 1813 until independence in 1964. The English preference for butter and lard over olive oil relegated olives to the diet of the common people, who were content with “a clove of garlic, or an onion, anchovies dipped in oil, and salted fish,” as French knight Louis de Boisgelin observed in his 1804 history,
Ancient and Modern Malta.
Settling back for an evening of traditional food and folkloric songs and dances, I headed to Malta’s northern town of Mosta and Ta’ Marija Restaurant, which offers a top-notch version of the classic sampler, Mizet Malta, or Maltese Mezze. In between performances by young women wearing the distinctively Maltese black, hooped headscarves called
ghonnella, owner Marija Muscat informed me that, despite its vicissitudes over the centuries, olives and olive oil remain essential in Maltese cuisine and culture. “They are used widely on our island, in food and for medicinal purposes. You will find a jar with olives and olive oil in every household in Malta,” she said.
In Islam the Qur’an references both the olive tree and olive oil, as do several hadiths (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad). “He causes to grow for you the crops, the olives, the date-palms, the grapes, and every kind of fruit,” reads Sura 16:11. In Sura 24:35, the plant is praised as the “blessed olive tree.” “Eat olive oil with your bread,” Ibn Majah recorded the Prophet advising his followers, while Tirmidhi wrote, “The Prophet (peace and blessings of God be upon him) said: ‘Eat olive oil and use it on your hair and skin, for it is from a blessed tree.’”
Yet for much of modern history, most olive oil on Malta has been imported, from Italy and elsewhere, even though the archipelago’s subtropical, Mediterranean climate and rich, alkaline soil make it ideal for olive cultivation. Now, by encouraging landowners to grow native olive species, Cremona and the
primo initiative, which ran through 2012, have helped bring back Malta’s unique olives—including both the bajda and the bidni. “Thanks to this project, the population of olive trees in Malta is now growing,” Senior Agricultural Officer Carmelo Briffa acknowledged as he walked me through the government’s leafy nursery of fruit trees in Ghammieri, in central Malta. It’s home to 20 varieties of indigenou olives, including white olives. Now, at least 12,000 olive trees, including 70 white olive trees, are productive on dozens of farms throughout the Maltese Islands. The number of commercial presses has gone from the single one Cremona imported in 1996 to at least nine. Smaller, artisanal farms, such as Djar il-Bniet (House of the Sisters) in Dinghli, near Malta’s western shore, where I wandered through groves of 800-year-old olive trees, bottle single-varietal batches of olive oil that are sought after in the culinary world. During a 2013 visit to Cremona’s farm, British celebrity chef and cookbook author Jamie Oliver gave Maltese olive oil high marks for “freshness” while marveling that “the white olive tree [had] fruit of such pearlescent beauty that it would have seemed a crime to pick them.” At last year’s Olio Officina Festival in Milan, Maltese white olives were commended for taste, quality and appearance.
Science, too, has weighed in. Borg long ago observed that the bidni tree and its fruit “are very resistant to disease” as well as the dreaded olive fruit fly,
Dacus oleae. Modern analysis has confirmed that this is because the bidni is high in oleuropein, a natural antibiotic that also makes the oil an exceptionally healthy choice for human consumption. Most recently, University of Malta researcher Oriana Mazzitelli in a 2014 study compared the dna of three Maltese cultivars—bidni, bajda and another common variety called a Malti—with an Italian and a Tunisian variety.
The results, she said, surprised her. “The genetic differences were greater than I expected,which suggests that Maltese olives diverged at some early point and became extremely different than the rest of Mediterranean olives,” she said. Mazzitelli’s findings also reinforce Lia’s claim, first proposed by Borg nearly a century earlier, that the white olive may be a variant that had been introduced at some point later than the other varieties.
Back at Cremona’s farm, I enjoined him to take pity on a writer who had traveled 7,200 kilometers to investigate his singular, ivory-colored olives. In the kitchen, he fetched a jar from the darkness of another wooden cupboard. As if this crypt wasn’t deep enough to shield his olive pearls from the flavor-sapping light of day, he peeled back layers of aluminum foil that encased the jar before opening its lid and plucking from the jar’s mouth a pair of oil-soaked bay leaves. He dotted a plate with a half-dozen or so pale, dimpled olives, swimming in golden oil. Then he showed me how to enjoy them like a native.
“Here, you go like this,” he demonstrated, proffering a hunk of crusty bread. “Dip the bread in the oil first, and suck on it. Don’t chew the bread.”
I followed his instructions. The flavor was rich and peppery, yet at the same time mild and sweet. After observing protocol, I gobbled down the bread and headed for the prize: my first white olive. The flavor was … delicious—bitter top, citrusy middle, briny finish. Reaching for another, I thought to myself, “If I could actually eat a pearl, this is just about how I’d expect it to taste.”
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