Hello
Just 5 minutes from the CBD of Mildura, Varapodio Estate is a family owned and operated Olive Grove. We are just over the Murray River, in the hamlet of Buronga and situated 800metres from the roundabout heading towards Gol Gol.
Varapodio is a small Italian town in the province of Reggio, in southern Calabria. It was the home town of the first generation of the Scopelliti family who migrated to Australia in the late 1940's. Like our region of Sunraysia, Varapodio was well known for its citrus, grape, olive and vegetable industries.
Olive trees were planted as a boundary to the property when Carmelo & Guiseppina and their three "bambini”, first settled on the "block" in Buronga in 1962. Olice oil was produced back then but in the old "stone on stone crushing method". Although the company of Varapodio Estate was only formed in 2007, the plantings of olive trees commenced in 2002. Originally, two varieties of olives, Nevadillo and S.A. Verdale were planted and in the next two years another five varieties, Arbequina, Frantoio, Leccino, Picual and Mission were added. At that stage 2200 trees were in the ground. In 2009, another 1500 trees of the old style olives which had been brought from Italy in the late 1940's, were propagated and planted. In 2007 a new Fimo olive oil processing machine was commissioned from Italy and our first crush of olives began. Thankfully for Joe and Donna, olive processing has changed greatly since the early days allowing for our olives to be handpicked and processed within the optimum time of 12 -24 hours. This ensures that our cold pressed EVOO is the best and freshest it can be.
Our Cellar Door- Cafe was built on farm in 2009, after operating for a couple of years from a temporary site in our garage. Tastings of our award winning olive oils are available. We also have olives, salad dressings and a range of olive oil moisturisers and soaps for sale.
In addition, we stock a wide array of other locally produced products, such as Murray River Salt, Outback Almonds, Jamie’s Fine Dressings, Roy Farm’s Summer Fruit, CosiGrape local dried fruit and Just Go Nuts pistachios, to name a few, as well as our own ever increasing range of preserves.
Our Cafe serves a home cooked menu of morning and afternoon teas and light lunches, including vegetarian and gluten free choices. Local seasonal produce is used where ever possible. Our olive oil ice-cream (as seen recently on the Postcards T.V. show), is also available in the cafe served with one of our desserts.
Crushing olives in the old days.