Harvesting Abstract Landscapes: Artistic Intervention to Celebrate the New Harvest of Fuenquesada Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Excellence and Inspiration for Remembrance

Every year, for a long time now, something extraordinary happens among the branches of the centennial olive trees in Las Fuentezuelas. Always the same and always different. Each harvest feels like it's happening for the first time. A moment of joy and celebration. The countryside has these things. The cyclical becomes something surprising.

No matter how many years we spend producing 100% Picual extra virgin olive oil, we never lose our capacity for amazement, and we rejoice as if it were a miracle.  

That's why, with this harvest—the 23rd—we wanted to take a step further and delve into the memory of those who, like us, confess their love for extra virgin olive oil.

For this celebration of the miraculous, we invited the artist Fátima Moreno to our olive grove. And what happened there, we will never forget.

Springs of Memory

Obtaining Picual extra virgin olive oil at its exact ripening point is the result of a cultural and intellectual process spanning centuries. Olives have been with us since memory existed, blessing us with the astonishing juice of their fruits.

Memory plays an essential role in producing our extra virgin olive oil. The land holds the memory of those who worked on it. Following in their footsteps is more than a debt; it's a duty and a privilege because nothing compares to being the heirs of those men and women who bonded with the olive trees and knew how to extract the unmatched juice from their fresh and proud olives.

Since the 19th century, the Las Fuentezuelas estate has belonged to the Quesada family, a lineage rooted in the Jaén countryside since the 18th century. These fertile lands were initially dedicated to vegetables, fruit trees, and cereals. However, in the mid-19th century, olive cultivation began to produce extra virgin olive oil.

Over the years, we have deepened our production of exceptional quality Picual extra virgin olive oil, combining tradition and innovation but always keeping alive the essence that fuels our genuinely olive-growing vocation.

Those who came before us in caring for our olive trees imprinted in them the memory of their unique ways of working. Ways guided, above all, by deep respect for the environment, as they were always aware that they were part of it. A memory that has come to us with clarity and fullness through our olive trees.

But how to transmit that memory?

The Harvester's Canvas

We wanted our new harvest—the 23rd—to be a tribute to the memory of all those people who, with their effort over the years, have made Fuenquesada extra virgin olive oil one of the most appreciated and admired, even beyond our borders.

Fátima Moreno is an artist, the author of an exciting and vibrant work. We knew she would help us express that intangible and inspiring something that guides us, and that we long to convey through our limited edition extra virgin.

It's a meeting of two worlds that recognize each other instantly. The harvesting cloth, spread under the olive trees, ready to collect the fruit, becomes a canvas, and Fátima summons landscapes that merge with the olive grove. It's impossible not to see how inspiration emanates from the branches, and the artist captures it on the large canvas where the freshly fallen olives lay. Because the artist imagines, and the farmer dreams. Both facing the elements, each with their tools, both defenseless against uncontrollable forces. And both make memory their refuge and sustenance.

We believe in what we do, in the intrinsic goodness of producing the best extra virgin we can make. And besides conviction, we are also moved by emotion.

And painting expresses the emotion of belonging to this olive estate that keeps alive the memory of those who came before us. The abstract landscapes that emerge from Fátima's brush are the emotions we feel with each harvest. That annual miracle so similar to the alchemy of artistic creation.

Opening a bottle of Fuenquesada is like peering into a world of ancestral essences and virtues through a Picual extra virgin olive oil of unprecedented purity, freshness, and personality.

Thus, inside each of the canisters containing the 2000 bottles of 500 ml that make up the 23rd harvest of Fuenquesada, our customers will find one of the 2000 unique pieces that Fátima Moreno has created—right in the olive grove—exclusively for Fuenquesada: an original and unrepeatable fragment of the harvester's canvas. Naturally, no two pieces are the same, just as no two harvests are alike, and no two experiences are the same with Fuenquesada Picual extra virgin.

Art is human effort to maintain the memory of what we truly are and, above all, what we aspire to be: excellence and inspiration for remembrance.

Watch the video of the artistic intervention Fuenquesada x Fátima Moreno