Tarragona 500 ml or 5 litre Can

Tarragona is one of the olive oils with which the story of De Olijfolie Shop began. More than twenty years later, it is still bottled especially for us at Gasull in Catalonia. Even the label is unique: it was created from a painting by Dutch artist Michel Poort.

Tarragona is not an olive oil that needs flashy packaging or an elaborate name to impress. It is balanced, aromatic and versatile – exactly the kind of extra virgin olive oil that quickly becomes a permanent fixture in a good kitchen.

Use it with salads, vegetables, pasta, fish, meat, bread, dressings and Mediterranean dishes. It has enough character to be noticed, yet remains versatile enough for everyday use.

Behind this Catalan olive-oil tradition stands Antonio Blasco. Once you know his family's story, it becomes clear that this is about much more than simply producing another bottle of olive oil.

Antonio's grandfather was shot dead in his own office during the period of the Spanish Anarchy. The killing was an act of retaliation after he had tried to break a strike.

Fear of another attack ran so deep that the office building was completely altered. Corridors, doors and rooms were rearranged until the building effectively became a maze.

Even today, the owner's office is remarkably difficult to find – an unusual architectural reminder of a turbulent family history.

Antonio's father was a proud man. He refused to sell his harvests to a multinational company that would process the olives into anonymous bulk olive oil.

He wanted the olives milled in his own mill so that he could control their treatment and maintain the quality he believed they deserved.

Economically, however, the company could not compete with the low prices of industrial production and eventually went bankrupt.

Years later, Antonio revived the family business. Not with the ambition of becoming as large as possible, but out of respect for what his father and grandfather had built.

Out of respect for them, Antonio still follows the traditional way of making olive oil associated with his grandfather's generation.

His olive oil production is therefore not merely a business. It is also a way of preserving the family's heritage.

Our Tarragona is bottled especially for De Olijfolie Shop by the Catalan olive-oil house Gasull.

That makes this more than a bottle that can simply be ordered from a generic wholesale catalogue. The product, the history and the distinctive label belong together – and that is how it has been part of our collection from the earliest years.

The olive oil is now used as a house oil by several Michelin-starred restaurants in the Netherlands. That suits the product perfectly: its history may be unusual, but ultimately an olive oil still has to perform in the kitchen.

Tarragona lies in north-eastern Spain, in Catalonia. It is a Mediterranean region with a long olive-oil tradition and a very different character from the enormous production areas farther south.