31 Mar Member Profile – Lentara Grove (TAS)
Martin and Sophie Grace at Lentara Grove, Exeter, Tasmania (Photo: Neil Richardson)
Lentara Grove is one of Tasmania’s oldest olive groves, located in the beautiful Tamar Valley, near Exeter, 30 minutes north of Launceston.
Run by husband and wife team, Martin and Sophie Grace take great pride in producing premium quality olive products from olives lovingly grown and tended on site. Their small grove is located on a north-facing slope on a ridge above the Tamar River – this site provides generous amounts of sunlight to ripen the olives to perfection as well as the perfect soil conditions to keep the trees happy.
Lentara Grove are all about sustainable farming – treating their trees and farm respectfully, so the environment remains as pristine as possible, their trees are as happy as possible and they provide a diverse range of products all grown, picked, processed, packed and labelled on site by Martin and Sophie.
Lentara Grove also offers a contract processing service for other olive groves in their modern, clean facility. They use an Oliomio 150 two-phase processor with twin malaxing bowls, capable of processing over 150 kg per hour and have made gold-medal winning oils for Lentara and for other groves with this equipment. Martin, the chief oil-maker has undertaken Masterclasses in Olive Oil Sensory assessment (Modern Olives) and Olive Oil Processing and Quality Development (Pablo Canamasas), giving confidence that he will bring the best out of your olives.