How a Farmer from Zagorje Created the Region’s First-Ever Olive Oil

Miro Mraz, a 37-year-old owner of a family farm from Kozjak Začretski near Sveti Križ Začretje, who planted the first olive grove in Hrvatsko Zagorje in March this year, recently completed his first olive harvest and made the first ever extra virgin olive oil from Zagorje.

"We planted three varieties, and now, in the very first year, two of them bore fruit. Otherwise, all the olives we planted took root because, luckily, it was a very favorable year for them," he told this Zagorje portal.

Interestingly, he didn’t send the olives for processing to Dalmatia, but made the olive oil himself.

"We gathered the courage and tried to make the oil ourselves. Olives are usually crushed, but we had to improvise. We ground them in a hammer mill, which is usually used for grinding corn, and then pressed them in a regular grape press, which isn’t strong enough. In the end, we managed to get two and a half liters of oil. We would have gotten more if we had taken the olives to Dalmatia, but we are more than satisfied as it is," said Miro Mraz.

By the way, when the news first broke about the olive grove in Zagorje, many made jokes in the spring.

"Of course, even today some people make jokes about my attempt, but they don’t bother me and I will persevere. Even if there won’t be olive oil for sale, I’ll be satisfied because I love the sea and I thought how I would make a little Dalmatian corner with olives, a stone house, and a dry stone wall on my estate in Kozjak, just for my own pleasure," Mraz said at the time in an interview with our late colleague Zlatko Šimić in April this year.