Aceites Cazorla

The story

Aceites Cazorla Sociedad Cooperativa Andaluza was founded in 1951 in Cazorla, in the province of Jaén, Andalucía, and is made up of more than 2,000 farmer-members from the towns of Cazorla, Chilluévar, La Iruela, Peal de Becerro, Quesada, and Santo Tomé, as well as others who keep their farms as sharecroppers from elsewhere in Spain. The cooperative sits in the foothills of the Sierras de Cazorla, Segura y las Villas Natural Park, a landscape of mountain olive groves where centenary and millenary olive trees — some exceeding 2,000 years old — grow alongside rosemary, lavender, and thyme. Because of the terrain, farmer-members harvest the olives in an almost artisanal way, using shawls and bundles as well as manual or knapsack shakers, before transporting the fruit to the mill.

At the mill, olives are unloaded into reception hoppers, classified by variety — Picual and Royal — and by quality, then cleaned, weighed, and moved to stainless steel storage hoppers, with the entire process subject to quality control by the cooperative's operators. To preserve quality, the maximum storage time in the hoppers does not exceed 12 hours before milling begins, after which the oil rests in stainless steel tanks in a temperature-controlled cellar held at around 20 °C. The bottling line can fill more than 1,500 litres of oil per hour, supplying customers both within Spain and internationally.

Facts checked on 10 October 2026