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.
Bustan El Zeitoun means olive grove. In 2011 Walid Mushantaf took a parcel of land in Abra, in the hills above Saida in southern Lebanon, that was set to become a construction site, and planted olives on it instead. Mushantaf grew up in Aabra and spent fifteen years in the Gulf while the civil war ran through Beirut. He made several trips to Italy, took advice from growers there and settled on twelve Italian cultivars for the soils of Aabra; some 6,000 trees went in, and the estate grove now runs to 30 hectares. Fruit is picked by hand, harvested early and cold pressed in the estate's own two-phase mill shortly afterwards. The brand takes its emblem from Eshmun, the Phoenician god of healing and guardian god of Sidon, whose temple stands nearby.
The judging record begins at home: silver at the Lebanese national extra virgin olive oil contest in 2017, gold there in 2018 and 2019. Abroad, the oil took a Gold at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition in 2018, silvers in 2019 and 2020 and gold again in 2023; a Gold Medal at the Athena International Olive Oil Competition in 2020; Extra Virgin Olive Oil of the Year from the World Ranking Extra Virgin Olive Oils committee for 2020 and again for 2023; and gold at both Olive Japan and EVO IOOC Italy in 2023. At the EVOOLEUM Awards 2024 the Itrana bottling won the Top 10 award for limited-production extra virgin olive oil, which placed it in that year's EVOOLEUM top-100 guide.
From the public record: bustanelzeitoun.com · hospitalitynewsmag.com
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.
