After nine years in the making, the first commercial harvest of a new French oil, Querubi, that goes “beyond organic” has gone on sale in Bayley & Sage, Italo, Gog Magog Hills and Cowdray Farm Shop, at £25 for 500ml. The oil is produced under the stewardship of Willem Voorvaart, a Dutch entrepreneur who is commited to environmental sustainability.
Voorvaart bought a 500 hectare estate in the French Pyrenees in 2006, where the land had been unfarmed for 50 years, and adopted stringent, non-chemical farming principles. “We are organic certified but in theory that would still allow us to use chemical pesticides and fertilisers if there is no biological alternative. We don’t,” he says. “We are one of the few farms not to use any chemicals.” The oil is a blend of Pyrenees Orientales olive varieties Poumal, Verdal, Oliviere and Picholine.
