Sax is a little town of around 10.000 inhabitants in the province of Alicante, just 50km from the sea. We own a 13ha large plot of land there in a valley between two mountains which are a protected nature park. The land is in around 600m hight which guarantees clean air and undisturbed growth of our trees. We own around 500 olive trees, most of them Changlot Real, some Picual and more than 100 almond trees of the Marcona type. Marcona almonds are also called the "QUEEN OF ALMONDS".
We manage our plantation as an organic farm and we are world wide the first plantation that has implemented the ISO 26000 International Standard on Social Responsibility. For example this means we do not hire illegal workers, we pay more than minimum wages and most of all, all family members also work on the farm, side by side. Most work is done by hand, we use machines only when absolutely necessary, so for example we have a 30 year old tractor that we use to collect the branches that we cut once a year to keep the trees in form. The harvest is done by hand, because the Changlot Real, an autochthon variety from the Alicante region, which the Romans already planted, is hard to harvest with machines, because they stick very tight to the trees. You really have to pull them off by hand. Most trees are more than 120 years old. They give a very strong oil which gives our olive oil a very typical and distinctive taste.
The name we gave our plantation is Laroliva. The story behind that is that we have two daughters, Mia and Lara. Lara sadly died at the age of 15 and in remembrance of her we gave the plantation this name. Every year at her birthday we plant a new olive tree which has the age she would have now.