Description
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A unique product has been created by leveraging our know-how and experience. This meticulous specialty is one with nature, is not mass produced and is hand-crafted by following and respecting tradition. We employed Slovenian wood, high-quality glass from well-established Slovenian glass works, and top notch cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil with a pinch of gold.
Every year we produce some 2000 l of cold-pressed, extra virgin olive oil – that heavenly golden-green nectar of unmatched quality.
Olive tree varieties
The olives chosen for Puravida olive oil come from an organically farmed olive grove in Ankaran, the heart of Slovenian coastline. The grove covers over 2 ha (5 acres) with some 700 olive trees, mostly of indigenous varieties such as Istrian belica, Ankaran and Piran črnica, drobnica, buga, and štorta, as well as a few Mediterranean varieties – leccino, pendolino, frantoio, and maurino. The hand-picked olives are cold-pressed in a state-of-the-art olive press at the Lisjak oil mill in Stara Šalara on the same day they are harvested. The oil is pressed using only mechanical procedures at a temperature not exceeding 27°C.
The origin of gold
Olive oil is also called green gold, so we decided to add 24-carat edible gold to our product and make it even more special, unique, and different. The latest research shows that gold was created in an even more dramatic way than we had assumed. Gold was namely forged in quite a rare and magnificent event – the collision of two neutron stars that caused gamma-ray bursts, resulting in unique stellar conditions for the element’s formation. Astonishing!
A unique experience
Edible gold is made by hammering pure gold into a leaf just 1/7,000 of a millimeter thick, with 1 gram of gold being turned into 1 square meter of leaf, which is then crumbled into gold dust. Gold has for centuries been used for medicinal purposes, for example to treat rheumatism and arthritis, since it is supposed to work as a painkiller, like a sort of elemental aspirin. Nowadays people take gold supplements in liquid form as colloid gold or as food decoration. You can find gold on food labels as E175. We added it to oil, creating a magical potion that will reward you with a unique experience. This elixir of life is of cosmic proportions.
History and Tradition
Olive oil production has a long tradition in Slovenian Istria, and olive oil from the region was mentioned back in the second century AD by the Greek geographer Pausanias (c. AD 110–c. 180) in his Description of Greece. This region’s oil is also mentioned in several sources from the 13th century and onward. Producing olive oil was the main economic activity in the area until the second half of the 19th century, but after the great frost of 1929 the industry suffered a decline.
The revitalization of this time-honored tradition began after 1985. After lengthy discussions and decades of poor visibility, olive oil from Slovenian Istria has gained a reputation as a delicacy and a true rarity, as the geographic position and climate of the olive growing region give the oil a range of unique qualities. Olives mostly come from small, privately-owned groves (up to 0.4 ha), and groves cultivating olives for olive oil cover only 92 ha of the Slovenian Istria.
