Bringing Award-Winning Spanish Olive Oils to Ireland

Summary

Sarah Merrigan is the founder of Sarah & Olive, a Dublin-based com­pany that imports and dis­trib­utes award-win­ning extra vir­gin olive oil from Spain. Merrigan’s back­ground as a chef and sus­tain­able food entre­pre­neur led her to appre­ci­ate high-qual­ity olive oil, and she now focuses on sourc­ing early-har­vest oils from pro­duc­ers who prac­tice organic and bio­dy­namic farm­ing for both sus­tain­abil­ity and qual­ity.

Sarah Merrigan is the founder of Sarah & Olive, a Dublin-based com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in import­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing award-win­ning extra vir­gin olive oil from Spain.

“With Sarah & Olive, I’m on a mis­sion to show­case the finest extra vir­gin olive oils pro­duced in Spain, and because Spain is the world’s biggest pro­ducer, this means we’re talk­ing about some of the finest extra vir­gin olive oils in the world,” Merrigan told Olive Oil Times.

With a back­ground as a chef, food writer and sus­tain­able food entre­pre­neur, Merrigan’s jour­ney in the culi­nary world includes years spent work­ing in Barcelona, where she devel­oped a deep appre­ci­a­tion for high-qual­ity olive oil.

Because Ireland doesn’t have a native olive oil cul­ture, I feel it’s impor­tant to edu­cate peo­ple so that they can make informed choices when buy­ing an olive oil rather than be guided by price or label.- Sarah Merrigan, founder, Sarah & Olive

“Barcelona is where I first saw how extra vir­gin olive oil is a real game changer in the kitchen,” she said. ​“I was a strict veg­e­tar­ian in those days, so nutri­tion as well as fla­vor was very impor­tant to how I cooked and thought about food.” 

Merrigan noticed that while food changed with the sea­sons in the Mediterranean, olive oil was always a con­stant.

“At that time in Ireland, sauces tended to be com­plex and heavy, whereas olive oil is sim­ple and light,” Merrigan said. ​“Rather than mask­ing the fla­vor of ingre­di­ents, it ele­vates it, and I loved that, as my cook­ing is all about whatever’s in sea­son from the mar­ket.” 

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“I saw how chefs and pretty much every­one else used olive oil to make every­thing taste bet­ter, and with all the health ben­e­fits, there was no down­side,” she added. ​“It was a rev­e­la­tion to me and changed my cook­ing for­ever.”

When Merrigan returned to Ireland, she noticed a sub­tle but sig­nif­i­cant shift in the Irish food scene. Although the restau­rant cul­ture remained rather old-fash­ioned, there was a grow­ing empha­sis on fresh pro­duce that reminded her of the sim­plic­ity she had come to love in Spain.

Keen to be part of this emerg­ing trend, Merrigan took a job at a farm­ers’ mar­ket in the city cen­ter. Inspired by the expe­ri­ence, she launched a weekly ​“box scheme,” col­lab­o­rat­ing with local pro­duc­ers to curate sea­sonal selec­tions of organic fruits and veg­eta­bles for home deliv­ery.

Recognizing that many cus­tomers were unfa­mil­iar with ingre­di­ents such as arti­chokes and fen­nel, Merrigan began writ­ing a weekly newslet­ter filled with cook­ing tips, nutri­tional insights and recipes tai­lored to each box’s con­tents. The newslet­ter even­tu­ally evolved into a pop­u­lar blog, fur­ther deep­en­ing the con­nec­tion with her grow­ing cus­tomer base.

As her busi­ness grew, how­ever, Merrigan began to find it chal­leng­ing to bal­ance the con­stant demands of work with her fam­i­ly’s needs. With three young chil­dren to care for, she even­tu­ally decided to step back from the ven­ture to focus more on her fam­ily life.

In 2019, though, every­thing changed again thanks to the per­sua­sive pow­ers of an old friend in Spain.

“A chef friend I’d met in Barcelona con­vinced me to come with her to her fam­ily home in Jaén, Andalusia, to meet olive oil pro­duc­ers from the region,” Merrigan said. ​“She had spent time work­ing in Ireland and was con­vinced that I had to start an olive oil busi­ness.” 

“I think meet­ing me with her gave pro­duc­ers the con­fi­dence to trust me with their brands, and once I saw that Ireland did indeed have a taste for good olive oil, I approached other pro­duc­ers like Nobleza del Sur and Finca la Torre, and that is when things started to take off for Sarah & Olive,” she added.

Sarah & Olive focuses on sourc­ing early-har­vest extra vir­gin olive oil from award-win­ning Spanish pro­duc­ers such as Finca la Torre, Nobleza del Sur and Dehesa de la Sabina. 

These oils are cel­e­brated for their fla­vors and health ben­e­fits, which are attrib­uted to their high polyphe­nol con­tent; how­ever, the farm­ing prac­tices of the pro­duc­ers are just as impor­tant. 

Merrigan works with pro­duc­ers who prac­tice organic and bio­dy­namic farm­ing, ensur­ing both sus­tain­abil­ity and qual­ity.

(Photo: Sarah & Olive)

“I’ve worked in the organic sec­tor for years, so sus­tain­abil­ity and bio­di­ver­sity are the cor­ner­stones of how I look at all food pro­duc­tion,” she said. ​“For me, they’re non-nego­tiable. In this age of mass-pro­duced, generic food, it’s cru­cial that we sup­port and make space for smaller, more qual­ity-focused olive oil pro­duc­ers because they are the future.”

Merrigan is also a staunch sup­porter of projects such as Olivares Vivos, believ­ing that the impor­tance of sus­tain­abil­ity goes beyond the cor­re­spond­ing improve­ments in oil qual­ity.

“[Olivares Vivos] is a great project, and I am delighted to see that pro­duc­ers I work with, like Finca la Torre and Dehesa de la Sabina, are part of it,” she said. ​“In gen­eral, I look for pro­duc­ers who take their stew­ard­ship of the land seri­ously, who under­stand the role they can play in improv­ing it for future gen­er­a­tions.”

“At present, we are los­ing aspects of the nat­ural world that will be impos­si­ble to rein­state, and the effects are increas­ingly cat­a­strophic, and it’s cru­cial that this informs how we eat and source food,” Merrigan added. ​“The south of Spain is becom­ing more and more arid, and pro­tect­ing the bio­di­ver­sity and soil health there is imper­a­tive.”

From her posi­tion at the inter­sec­tion of pro­duc­ers, sup­pli­ers and con­sumers, Merrigan has seen first­hand the effects of cli­mate change, extreme weather events and dis­rup­tions to global sup­ply chains in recent years. 

In addi­tion to record olive oil prices at ori­gin, she noted the impact that the soar­ing costs of trans­port and mate­ri­als, such as glass and cork, have had on the indus­try.

“On the other hand, the pub­lic appetite and appre­ci­a­tion for good qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil has been grow­ing steadily,” Merrigan said. ​“There is a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what extra vir­gin olive oil is and what goes into mak­ing a good one.” 

“This can only be a good thing,” she added. ​“To ensure that prop­erly pro­duced extra vir­gin olive oil has a future, it’s essen­tial that the work involved is rec­og­nized and that pro­duc­ers are paid prop­erly for what they do.”

Merrigan, who com­pleted the Olive Oil Times Sommelier Program in London ear­lier this year, is ded­i­cated to edu­cat­ing oth­ers about the world of olive oil. She hosts tast­ing events and mas­ter­classes, often in col­lab­o­ra­tion with chefs and nutri­tion­ists, to share insights into olive oil vari­eties, tast­ing tech­niques and culi­nary appli­ca­tions.

“Because Ireland doesn’t have a native olive oil cul­ture, I feel it’s impor­tant to edu­cate peo­ple so that they can make informed choices when buy­ing an olive oil rather than be guided by price or label,” Merrigan said. 

“From the begin­ning, I’ve talked a lot about things like the taste of olive oil vari­etals, the dif­fer­ence between early and later har­vest, har­vest dates and how to keep your olive oil in good con­di­tion,” she added. 

“And of course, as a for­mer chef, I love show­ing peo­ple how to use great olive oil to make the sim­plest ingre­di­ents and dishes taste incred­i­ble,” Merrigan con­tin­ued. ​“Obviously, there are all the health ben­e­fits to con­sider, and I think Irish peo­ple are very open to learn­ing about these, as car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease is one of the lead­ing causes of death in Ireland.”

That lack of a native olive oil cul­ture in a coun­try famous for the qual­ity of its but­ter might lead many to won­der whether Irish cook­ing and the Mediterranean diet are nat­u­rally com­pat­i­ble. Merrigan believes that there are far more sim­i­lar­i­ties than one might think, though.

“Ireland is a coun­try that pro­duces incred­i­ble pro­duce, and in recent years, there has been a move towards locally-grown sea­sonal ingre­di­ents, and I think olive oil, while not Irish, does a fab­u­lous job at unlock­ing the poten­tial of fresh Irish pro­duce,” she said.

“A com­mon mis­con­cep­tion is that Irish food is stodgy and not very sophis­ti­cated. The oppo­site is true. There is an incred­i­ble appre­ci­a­tion for ingre­di­ents and prove­nance, with local sea­sonal ingre­di­ents being cel­e­brated like never before,” Merrigan added. 

“Of course, Ireland is also a much more mul­ti­cul­tural soci­ety than it was 20 or 30 years ago, and this has led to more diver­sity in the kitchen. As long as ingre­di­ents are respected, any­thing goes,” she con­cluded.