Olive Auction built this page from public records so buyers can find the estate. Its own people can claim it at no cost — complete the story, list lots, answer buyers.
After a claim, we confirm by emailEverything here comes from public sources — award lists, certification registers, the territory inventories. The rest of the story — the family, the grove, the real age of the trees, this year's lab sheet — only the mill can tell, and it is the part buyers bid on.
ALTO Olives takes its name from the Latin altus, high, and grows where that reads literally: the western foothills of Australia's Great Dividing Range near Crookwell, in New South Wales, where warm summers ripen the fruit and cold autumns and winters hold the flavour in it. Robert Armstrong established the enterprise in 1999. Alongside selected European varieties the grove carries Hardy's Mammoth, an Australian colonial selection, and Hardy's Mammoth alone goes into the flagship, ALTO Vividus.
Picking is mechanised and the fruit reaches an on-site mill within hours, where a centrifuge does the extraction; the oil then settles six weeks in stainless steel before racking, and is tested in an internationally certified government laboratory. The mill runs on solar power and burns its own spent olive pits for heat, and sheep graze between the rows. Vividus is published at free fatty acid below 0.2 per cent and a peroxide value under 12, against International Olive Council limits of 0.8 per cent and 20, and it is certified under the Australian Olive Association's OliveCare code and to HACCP.
The record follows the single varietal. By the producer's account Vividus was named Best in Class at the 2019 New York International Olive Oil Competition, champion varietal at the 2019 Sydney Royal Show, and took the Champion Trophy at the 2021 Australian International Olive Awards. In 2026, after harvest, ALTO joined Oasis Olives, an olive-growing business operated by the Symington family.
From the public record: alto-olives.com.au · internationaloliveawardsaustralia.com.au
A producer account takes a minute — name, mill, region. We attach this profile the same day.
Lab numbers, tree references, harvest dates, a photo — the tap-through form asks only for what buyers pay for.
Auction with a confidential reserve, or a fixed-price allocation. We review it and it goes live.
The catalogue goes to this list before it goes on the site. When the sale closes you get every hammer price from it — including the ones that disappointed.
Two emails. Then quiet until Sale No. 2.
