History - About

My wife Daida and I (Hans de Roos) bought the small estate and ruins of Can Solivera ('House of the Olive Grove') in Baix-Empordà, a region in northern Catalonia, back in 1977, when we were temporarily stationed in Spain by the Dutch multinational that I was working for. The oldest section of the stone farmhouse dates from the 11 th century. Piece by piece, we have restored the house in the original style, but then with all the modern conveniences.

In 1989, I retired early from the business world and we decided to move to Can Solivera to devote our time and energy to farming the surrounding fields.

We planted our first Arbequina olive trees there in 1996, cultivating this Catalonian variety of olive as a bush to facilitate the harvesting and making use of a modern drip-irrigation system. The microclimate in this particular region, which lies between the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean Sea, gives us surprising results in terms of quality and taste.

In 2001 we started our second olive project some 350 km further south. There, the Arbequina olive trees had already been planted hundreds of years ago on the steep slopes of the Ebro valley, where the river forms the border between Catalonia and Aragón. Thanks in part to our efforts, a number of these old olive groves now have official EU organic farming certification.

After two years of experimenting, we began in 2004 with the production of our unique olive-oil soap according to a mediaeval recipe---an unexpected and immediate success.

In 2007 we brought the first containers full of fresh 100% Arbequina extra virgin olive oil from the Les Garrigues region to Can Solivera to be bottled. The old olive trees grow there on the plateau near Arbeca, the cradle of the Arbequina variety of olive. The Spaniards generally consider olive oil from there to be very best of the bunch.

While my parents were as Dutch as can be, Daida's maternal grandfather, Paco Minguell, was born in a small village near Arbeca.