🫒 Carolea

Carolea is the most important olive variety of Calabria in southern Italy. It covers more than 50 thousand hectares, mostly in the province of Catanzaro, and also in Cosenza, Crotone, Vibo Valentia and Reggio Calabria. Where the variety came from is unknown.

Carolea has more than twenty local names, such as Calabrese, Catanzarese and Oliva Dolce. Some of them, like "crow's beak" or "crow's snout", describe the shape of the fruit with its noticeable pointed tip.

The fruit is large and black when ripe. Carolea is used both for oil and for table olives. The fruit is rich in oil, from 18 to 22 per cent of its weight, depending on when it is picked. The oil contains about 73 per cent oleic acid and is considered good in flavour and composition.

The tree starts bearing late, and its crop is medium and alternates from year to year. The fruit does not hold very tightly to the branches, so it is easy to harvest by machine. The variety withstands cold but suffers badly from the olive fly and leaf spot.