The Middle East's Most Famous Olive Oil Seeks to Rebrand Itself

Now is the time to visit olive presses in the Galilee, where a few growers aim to bring the region’s superlative oil to world prominence

It’s the beginning of the olive harvest season, but the doors of Musa Halaf’s oil press in the Beit Kerem Valley in the Galilee are shut. In Rameh, where Halaf was born, the olives are harvested later than in the rest of the country. “We used to begin the pressing only after Christmas,” says the meticulously dressed, dignified-visaged Halaf, 78. “In our region, where we still grow ancient olives of the Syrian variety, we harvest the olives using poles, and it’s easier to harvest them ripe, when they’ve started to blacken.”

In Rameh, people continue to take pride in their olive oil’s reputation, which extends throughout the Levant. “If today in Lebanon you say ‘olive oil from Rameh,’ which is already mentioned in the Old Testament, you’ll be treated like a king,” says Halaf. But the late harvest is not the reason why the doors of the oil press have been shut in recent years.