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.
João das Barbas came out of the Mirandela area of the Azeite de Trás-os-Montes DOP, a designation registered in 1994 over a region where Cobrançosa, Verdeal Transmontana, Madural and Cordovil dominate. Maria Andrade's family had grown olives there for generations, but she did not make oil under her own label until 2008, at the age of 80. The name on it was a nickname her father carried as a student at Coimbra. Her grove ran to 29 hectares, farmed almost entirely organically, and she picked early to get ahead of the hard winters, a choice she reckoned cost some yield and paid back in quality.
Recognition followed fast. Flos Olei, the Italian guide edited by Marco Oreggia, gave her its Emerging Olive Oil Mill award in 2009, a prize intended for young farms, placed her in its world top 20 and scored the oil 90, noting a deep clear golden yellow, a broad nose and a palate running to chicory, lettuce, mint and sage. In 2010 the oil took second place in the extra virgin DOP category at the first world championship for extra virgin olive oil, judged in the Italian pavilion of the Shanghai World Expo, with gold at TerraOlivo in Israel and a prestige gold at Olivinus in Argentina the same year. In 2012, entered as João das Barbas DOP under the name Maria Constança de Castro Doutel de Andrade, it took a Grand Prestige Gold at TerraOlivo.
From the public record: oliveoiltimes.com · pedevideira.blogspot.com · nordestecomcarinho.blogspot.com · regioes.blogspot.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.
