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.
Babylonstoren stands under the Simonsberg in the Cape Winelands, on a farm the record dates to 1692, and it holds what that record describes as one of the oldest Cape Dutch houses in South Africa. Koos Bekker and Karen Roos have owned it since 2007. It still works as a farm, growing fruit, vegetables, wine grapes and olives around a formal garden laid out by Patrice Taravella on the model of the Company's Garden in Cape Town, with a restaurant in a converted cowshed that kept its Cape Dutch gables.
The olives grow on the Simonsberg slopes, and the farm presses varieties separately as well as blending them: Frantoio goes out on its own, Coratina as the robust one, and the blend is drawn from five varieties. Petrus van Eeden and his team take the fruit through from picking to cold pressing to decanting.
The 2025 SA Olive Awards, where a panel sitting in Stellenbosch judges oils certified under the association's Commitment to Compliance scheme, gave Babylonstoren four Golds in the medium class — for its Blend, its Coratina, its Versnit, and the Frantoio it bottles as Vlakte — and a Silver in the same class for a second Frantoio.
From the public record: babylonstoren.com · saolive.co.za · en.wikipedia.org
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.
