The oil is pressed in November. You can taste it all year.
Which frantoio still lets you stand on the mill floor. What an honest tasting flight costs outside Chania. Whether the Chianti estate day is worth the drive out of Florence. Reviews of every olive oil tour, tasting and mill visit you can book.
Four olive oil days worth building a week around.
A working press on Corfu, a tasting bench above Chania, an Andalusian estate outside Ronda and a farm table over the Bay of Naples. What each costs, and what the people who booked it say afterwards.
01The mill visitThe Governor’s Olive Mill Tour with Olive Oil TastingA Corfu press where the fruit goes in the same day it comes off the tree. The tasting at the end is the whole argument for going.
02The tasting benchOlive Oil, Wine, Cheese & Honey Tasting TourOil, wine, cheese and honey lined up outside Chania. The cheapest hour anywhere on this site for learning what a peppery finish actually is.
03The almazaraLA Almazara LA Organic, Olive Oil Museum and TastingAn Andalusian estate above Ronda with an oil museum of its own, then a tasting that finishes out among the trees.
04The farm daySorrento Farm and Food Experience including Olive Oil, Limoncello, Wine tastingOil, limoncello and lunch on a working farm in the hills behind Sorrento, with the bay somewhere under the terrace.
Greece, Italy and Spain press most of what you pour. Book where it happens.
Cretan village presses, the Ionian terraces, Tuscan estate roads, the almazaras of Andalusia, the Chianti hills by bike and the Knossos day that ends at a mill. Six places to start, and the best olive oil day in each.
Crete presses more olive oil than whole countries do. Start the trip there.
Three kinds of Greek olive day, what it costs to join each one, and which coast it happens on.
The olive oil tours travellers take more than any others.
Every olive oil tour we have reviewed →Mills, tastings and farm lunches that fill up first, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Sorrento Farm and Food Experience including Olive Oil, Limoncello, Wine tasting
Travel from central Sorrento to La Masseria, a fourth-generation farm producing lemons, olives, wine, honey, cheese, and more. Family guides such as Eugenio and Raffaele lead the walk, tastings, and farm-to-table meal. Expect about four hours, some walking, and round-trip transport.
From · $114
Read our review →
2
3 Wineries, Olive Oil Factory Tour & Tasting
from $34
3
Knossos-Zeus Cave -Old Traditional Villages-Olive Oil Factory
from $136
4
The Governor’s Olive Mill Tour with Olive Oil Tasting
from $82
5
Olive Oil, Wine, Cheese & Honey Tasting Tour
from $49
6
Road-trip to Lasithi, Zeus Cave & Olive Mill Farm
from $47
7
LA Almazara LA Organic, Olive Oil Museum and Tasting
from $29
8
Olive oil tasting in Sorrento
from $50
Oil with wine, oil with honey, oil poured on its own.
Most olive oil tours end at a table. These are the ones where the table is the point: flights poured in order, a glass of the local red beside them, honey and cheese to prove the difference between one hillside and the next.
Forty minutes on a mill floor changes how you shop forever.
Fruit in one end, green oil off the decanter at the other, and somebody who can tell you why theirs tastes of cut grass and the supermarket bottle tastes of nothing. Most presses take visitors in the morning while they are actually running.
The presses only run from October to January. The groves are open all year.
Pressing season is short. Fruit starts coming in around mid-October and most estates are finished by late January, and that is the only window where you watch oil actually being made — noisy, cold, green, and worth planning a trip around. Outside it the trees, the tasting rooms and the farm kitchens carry on, and the oil in the glass is the same oil.
What an olive oil day costs, from a bench tasting to a private estate.
Every tour on the site grouped by price. A surprising number of the best mornings come in under the price of the bottle you take home.
Mill tours that end in a tasting, museum visits, grove walks and the short farm stops.
The proper day out: estate, guided press, a flight poured in order and a long lunch.
Private drivers, chef-led tables and the estates that take one group a day.
Three things that only happen where the trees are.
Vineyards and farm shops exist everywhere. A mill floor in full harvest, a grove of trees older than the road beside it, and a cave-and-press day on the same ticket do not.
A frantoio in full season
Older presses crushed under granite wheels and pressed the paste through stacked mats; almost everything commercial now goes through a hammer mill and a horizontal decanter, and the oil comes out cloudy and bright green. Both are worth seeing, and a mill that keeps the old room usually shows you the two side by side. The smell on the floor in November is the reason people book it twice.
- 13 Wineries, Olive Oil Factory Tour & Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 901 reviews
- 2Knossos-Zeus Cave -Old Traditional Villages-Olive Oil Factory★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 694 reviews
- 3The Governor’s Olive Mill Tour with Olive Oil Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 502 reviews
Trees older than the road
Around Ostuni and Brindisi the groves hold trunks measured in centuries, hollowed out and rebuilt by their own growth until they look like sculpture. They are still farmed, the nets still go down in November, and the walk between them is flat, shaded and slow. Most masseria tours end with oil, bread and a chair in the shade.
- 1Masseria tour among thousand-year-old olive trees with oil tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 261 reviews
- 2Olive Grove Tour with Wines & Olive Oil Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 241 reviews
- 3Traditional Olive Grove and Dragon Fruit Farm Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 118 reviews
Zeus’s cave, then the press
The Lasithi run out of Heraklion strings together the plateau, the cave the myth puts Zeus in, a pottery village and a working olive mill, usually with lunch somewhere between them. It is the one day on Crete where the ancient sites and the oil are on the same ticket, and it is why the mill visits sell so well on this island.
- 1Knossos-Zeus Cave -Old Traditional Villages-Olive Oil Factory★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 694 reviews
- 2Road-trip to Lasithi, Zeus Cave & Olive Mill Farm★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 451 reviews
- 3Lassithi, Zeus Cave, Olive Mill Farm & Knossos Combo Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 404 reviews
Four olive oil bookings that will not wait until the morning.
Most tastings can be arranged the night before. These four cannot: one tasting room, one table, timed entry at the site the day is built around, or a bike per rider.
- 01The Governor’s Olive Mill Tour with Olive Oil TastingOne mill, one tasting room and small groups. In high summer the Corfu slots go days out.
- 02Knossos-Zeus Cave -Old Traditional Villages-Olive Oil FactoryKnossos runs on timed entry, so the whole plateau-and-press day is built around a slot you hold in advance.
- 03Tuscany Bike Tour with Wine, Oil and Food in the Florentine HillsA bike per rider and a fixed departure. The Tuscan oil rides fill first in the shoulder months, which are the best months to ride them.
- 04Sorrento Farm and Food Experience including Olive Oil, Limoncello, Wine tastingThe farm above Sorrento seats one group at the table, so lunch is the cap on the whole day.
Grove walks: the flat, shaded half-day nobody books early enough.
An hour among the trees with somebody who prunes them, then oil and bread at the end of it. Easy underfoot, good in heat, and the cheapest way onto a working estate.
Every grove walk →
By place — where the mills are
By kind of day — mill floor, tasting bench, grove or kitchen
Chania to Andalusia: six towns where the olive year sets the calendar.
Chania
AndalusiaStraight off the press: the olive oil tours added last.
Keep reading the new ones →
Flavors of Crete from Chania: Wine & Olive Oil Tasting Tour
Read our review →
Locorotondo: Guided E-bike Tour & Olive Oil Tasting
Read our review →
Douro Valley: Private Tour & Guided Wine & Olive Oil Tasting
Read our review →
Douro Valley: Private Lunch with Wine & Olive Oil Tasting
Read our review →
The secret of wine, cheese and olive oil at a farm
Read our review →
Douro Valley: Olive Oil & Wine Tour with Boat & Lunch
Read our review →
Cured Meat & Olive Oil Tasting & Visit near Pisa & Livorno
Read our review →
Local Wine Tasting & Visit to the Ancient Olive Tree
Read our review →
Olive Oil Factory Tour, Dinner & Traditional Dancing
Read our review →
Olive Oil & Wine Tastings & Traditional Villages Tour
Read our review →
