Olivegrower profile - 2020 AIOA Winner
Barry and Anne Sander took their skills in food production, added a passion for olives and became award-winning EVOO and flavoured oil producers.
From baking to Barouni a winning move for Tarralea Grove After 50 years as a qualified pastry cook, Barry Sander knew quite a bit about food production. And as owners of their own bakery for 23 years, he and wife Anne knew all about flavours and processes. So when life segued into olives in the early 2000s, it’s only natural that they took those skills and ran with them to become nationally awardwinning EVOO producers.
2020 Award wins
The Sanders’ Tarralea Grove brand was one of the impressive multi-award winners at last year’s Australian International Olive Awards (AIOA). Their Barouni varietal EVOO took Gold and two trophies - Reserve Champion Robust EVOO and Best Western Australian EVOO - while their Tarralea Grove Blend (Mission, Kalamata, Frantoio and Manzanillo) and Hojiblanca varietal were both awarded Bronze medals. That beautiful Barouni EVOO also impressed the judges at the Western Australian Olive Awards, earning Premium Gold and the Best Boutique Oil of Show
award with a 90-point score. They added to the WA haul with a Premium Gold for the Tarralea Grove Blend and Gold for the Hojiblanca. And they started the 2020 awards season with a trifecta win at the Royal Adelaide Olive Awards, taking home Gold, Silver and Bronze for their three entries.
Background
The Sanders’ move into olive production started in the early 1980s, when they bought their property at Jarrahdale, south of Perth. “The land had nothing on it so we wanted to make use of it, and when we finished with baking full time we decided to do something different. I’ve loved eating olives since I was a child, when I was introduced to them visiting relatives in the Barossa, so it seemed like a good thing to grow,” Barry said. “We started with six trees, which Anne bought me for an anniversary in 2002 at an olive open day in Gingin. We then gradually increased over next three years to 300 trees. We’ve got 5.5 acres and the 300 trees is just
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nice – it’s the number we realised we could manage on our own.
Varietal blend
“Early in that planting process we set up a base of 60 trees of assorted varieties, as we didn’t know at the time if we were going to do pickling or oil. “The original ones Anne bought me were Volos, Kalamata, UC13 and Verdale, then the chap at the nursery gave me more information and a whole list. We marked up Mission for oil, and Kalamata and Manzanilla as dual varieties so we had the option of table olives if we went down that road. “Then we decided it was going to be oil, so we did the rest of the planting with that in mind: we ended up with Mission predominantly, 50 each Kalamata and Manzanilla, and the rest a mix of Barouni, Hojiblanca, Volos, Ascolano, UC13 and a small number of Frantoio. “In hindsight you’d say we should have made that choice earlier but the table olive
