Pillar 04 · Food & Where to Eat

Olive Oil From Żejtun: Where to Buy

The town’s name means “olives”, and a small modern revival of olive growing has begun to put bottled local oil back on Żejtun shelves. Here is where to find it, and how to tell what’s actually local.

This article is a stub. We’ll keep updating producers and stockists each autumn after the press.

What “local” means here

Olive cultivation in Malta declined sharply in the 19th and 20th centuries; the market for olive oil in the islands today is dominated by Italian, Spanish, and Greek imports. In the last twenty years a small revival has begun: traditional Maltese cultivars (Bidni in particular) have been replanted on terraces around the south, oil is pressed locally each autumn, and a small number of growers around Żejtun now bottle and label oil under their own names. Yields are modest. Bottles are not always cheap. What you’re paying for is freshness, traceability, and the support of a working agricultural revival on land the Romans were already pressing oil from.

How to tell what’s actually local: a labelled producer, a Maltese address, a harvest year on the bottle, and ideally a cultivar name. If a bottle just says “Maltese olive oil” with no producer detail, it may be blended. [LOCAL FACT — Mattew to name 1–2 specific Żejtun producers and where to buy from them, plus any farmers’ markets or shops that stock local oil.]

How to taste olive oil properly

Tasting olive oil seriously means a small pour into a small glass, warmed in the cupped hand for a minute, sipped with a sharp inhalation through the lips, and held briefly on the tongue before swallowing. Good Maltese oil is grassy on the nose, peppery on the throat (the pepperiness is the antioxidant signature), and finishes clean. Bad oil tastes flat or stale or, worst, fusty. The autumn-press oils are the most intense and usually the most worth buying; later in the year, the oil rounds out and loses some of its peppery edge but gains a more even balance. Both styles have their use.

What this article will cover

  • Named Żejtun olive oil producers
  • Where to buy direct from the grove
  • Shops in town that stock local oil
  • The autumn press — when, where, and whether you can visit
  • Tasting notes for Maltese olive oil
  • How to take oil home (airline rules, bubble wrap)

Read more on this pillar

Part of our Food & Where to Eat pillar. Pair with the olive heritage, markets and shopping, and the Roman villa.

Mattew Cassar

Resident · Writer

Mattew writes zejtun.com from a flat above his grandfather’s old workshop on Triq San Girgor. He has lived in Żejtun for twenty-three of his thirty-one years.