OLIVE OIL TOURS · ACROSS THE MEDITERRANEAN
From the grove to the glass of green-gold.
Ancient groves in Crete, hill estates in Tuscany, the great almazaras of Andalucia, island farms in Croatia and Mallorca. Real reviews of the estate and mill tours worth booking, where you walk the trees, watch the press and taste the oil at the source.
Worth a trip for the oil alone
Three places that taste like nowhere else.
Olive trees grow all around the Mediterranean, but a handful of regions turn oil into something you travel for. Crete for the thousand-year groves, Andalucia for the endless harvest, Tuscany for that peppery first press. Start with the terroir that sounds like your kind of day.
Greece
Crete
No island takes its oil more seriously. The groves here are among the oldest cultivated land on earth, some trees still fruiting after a thousand years, and nearly every village has a mill. A grower walks you through the trees, shows you the stone press and the modern centrifuge side by side, then sits you down to taste the unfiltered, grassy, peppery oil that locals pour on everything. Crete is where you learn what fresh really means.
- 1 From Chania: Olive Oil, Wine, Cheese & Honey Tasting Tour
- 2 From Chania: Wine and Olive Oil Tasting Tour with Snacks
- 3 The Terra Creta Olive Oil Experience Tour
Spain
Andalucia
Andalucia grows more olives than anywhere on the planet, an ocean of silver trees rolling to the horizon across Jaen, Cordoba and the hills around Ronda. The tours here run through grand cortijos and high-tech almazaras, and the best of them put a flight of single-estate oils in front of you, picual and hojiblanca and arbequina, and teach you to taste the difference like a wine.
- 1 Private Tasting of Olive Oil in Córdoba
- 2 Olive Oil tasting breakfast & Tour in Cordoba
- 3 Extra Virgin Olive oil tasting
Italy
Tuscany
Tuscan oil is the connoisseur’s pour: green, grassy, with that famous catch of pepper at the back of the throat. A morning at a Chianti hill estate is half walk, half lesson, through the terraced groves to the frantoio where the new harvest is pressed cold, finishing at a table where you taste the olio nuovo on bruschetta with a glass of the estate’s wine. Few food experiences in Italy are this quietly perfect.
- 1 Tuscany Bike Tour with Wine, Oil and Food in the Florentine Hills
- 2 Florence Food Tour: Home-Made Pasta, Truffle, Cantucci, Olive Oil, Gelato
- 3 Florence: Tuscany Bike Tour with Wine & Olive Oil
If you only book one
The estate tour more travellers rave about than any other.
Out of every olive oil tour on the site, this is the one that sends people home telling everyone they know to go.
The favourites
The Most Popular Olive Oil Tours Right Now
Cretan grove walks, Tuscan first-press tastings, Andalucian mill tours, Dalmatian farm afternoons. The bookings travellers are happiest they made.
Start with a region
The best olive oil tours, region by region.
Crete for the ancient groves, Tuscany for the first cold press, Andalucia for the great mills. Pick where you are headed and we will show you the estate and mill tours worth booking there.
Where the great oil comes from
Three olive countries, three kinds of day.
If you have not picked a region yet, start with the oil you are curious about. Each of these is a country the site covers deeply, and a very different morning waiting at the end of it.
Crete
Trees that were old a thousand years ago.
Cretan groves are among the oldest cultivated land on earth, gnarled trunks still fruiting after centuries, and the island lives on their oil. A grower walks you out under the silver leaves, shows you the old stone mill beside the modern press, and pours the unfiltered green oil over Cretan rusks and fresh cheese at a shaded table. This is where you taste what every other oil is measured against.
See the best Crete olive oil tours →Tuscany
Catch the new oil the day it is pressed.
A Tuscan estate morning is half walk, half lesson: through the terraced groves of Chianti to the frantoio where the autumn harvest runs cloudy and cold. You finish where the family does, tasting the peppery olio nuovo on warm bruschetta with a glass of the estate’s own wine. Time it for late autumn and you taste the oil hours after it leaves the press.
See the best Tuscany olive oil tours →Andalucia
An ocean of olive trees to the horizon.
Andalucia grows more olives than any place on earth, ranks of silver trees rolling unbroken across Jaen and Cordoba and the hills above Ronda. An almazara tour takes you inside the great mills at the height of the harvest, the air thick with the smell of crushed fruit, and pours you a flight of single-estate oils, picual, hojiblanca, arbequina, to taste like a sommelier.
See the best Andalucia olive oil tours →Corfu & the Ionian
The groves the Venetians planted.
Corfu’s hills are carpeted with olive trees the Venetians paid islanders to plant four centuries ago, and many are still worked by the same families. A tour winds up through the old groves to a restored mill, the Governor’s among the finest, where you see how the cloudy Lianolia oil is made and taste it with the island’s bread, herbs and kumquat.
- 1 The Governor’s Olive Mill Tour with Olive Oil Tasting
- 2 Corfu: Olive Oil Experience – The Governor’s Olive Mill
- 3 Corfu: Greek Cooking Class & Olive Oil Tasting
By the season
When do you want to walk the grove?
A quiet green morning under thousand-year-old Cretan trees. The Tuscan first press in the low autumn light. The Andalucian mills in full roar at the peak of the harvest. Pick the season that sounds like your kind of day in the olives.
Any month
Crete, a grove and a long table.A walk through silver-leafed trees that were old before the Venetians came, then the stone mill, then a shaded table of Cretan rusks, cheese and that morning’s green-gold oil. The gentlest, most welcoming way into olive country.
Harvest light
Tuscany, the new oil on warm bread.A hill estate in the low autumn light, the nets out under the trees, the press running cloudy and peppery. You taste the olio nuovo the way the family does, on warm unsalted bread, the day it comes off the mill.
Full harvest
Andalucia, the almazara in full cry.Deep in the Jaen and Cordoba countryside at the height of the picking, the great mills running day and night, the whole valley smelling of fresh-crushed fruit. The loudest, most alive olive harvest in the world.
Sicily
Volcanic earth, intense green oil.
Sicily presses some of the boldest oil in Italy from old native varieties like nocellara and biancolilla, grown on volcanic soil under a relentless sun. The estate tours here run through groves in the shadow of Etna and the baroque hill towns of the southeast, and finish at tables laid with the island’s bread, tomatoes and cheese so you taste the oil the way Sicilians actually eat it, generously and with everything.
See all 7 Sicily olive oil tours →By region
Pick a corner of the Mediterranean.
Crete for the ancient groves. Tuscany for the first cold press. Andalucia for the great mills. Corfu for the Venetian trees. Sorrento for the terraced farms. Dalmatia for the island oil.
More regions
More olive country worth the trip.
Heraklion and Chania for the heart of Crete, Sicily for the volcanic groves, Mallorca for the mountain estates, Kalamata and the Peloponnese for the famous green oil, Puglia for the monumental old trees. The rest of the map, ready when you are.
Three regions, three olive days
Pick a region, plan the day around the table.
A hill farm above Heraklion, a lemon-and-olive terrace in Sorrento, an island konoba lunch out of Split. Three regions, three very different ways to spend a day in the groves.
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