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.
Domaine Nicoleau is at Bénivay-Ollon, with olive ground spread across Bénivay-Ollon and Buis-les-Baronnies in the Baronnies Provençales, and its founding date belongs to a still rather than a mill. In 1902 Joseph Nicoleau bought the alembic numbered 186 and worked the villages of the Drôme Provençale — Buis-les-Baronnies, Saint-Auban, Montbrun-les-Bains — as a travelling distiller. Gaston followed him, then Henri, who took the business on in 1952 with his wife Hélène, then Gilbert from 1993, and now Franck, the fifth generation. Alembic 186 finished its working life in 1996 and went to a regional museum.
The olives are the other half of the holding. The domaine grows Tanche, which it calls the emblematic variety of the Baronnies Provençales, and bottles the oil as Nyons AOP under organic certification. It has its own mill and presses within 24 to 48 hours of picking; that timing is what the domaine gives as the reason for the oil's quality, describing the result as mild and fruity. A 2019 profile by the association In Olio Veritas put the olive side at 3.5 hectares yielding 2,000 litres a year, gathered in November with electric combs. In 2022, at the nineteenth Concours des Huiles d'Olive de France en Appellation d'Origine, judged at Nyons, a 500-litre lot of the domaine's Nyons AOP oil took a gold medal.
From the public record: domainenicoleau.fr · inolioveritas.org · le-grand-pastis.com
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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.
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Two emails. Then quiet until Sale No. 2.
