🫒 Kalamon

Kalamon (Καλαμών) is a Greek olive cultivar with large, almond-shaped fruit, from which the famous Kalamata table olives are made. It grows throughout mainland Greece and covers almost a quarter of the country's table-olive orchards. The International Olive Council also lists its local names: Kalamata, Kalamatiani, Aetonychi and Chondrolia.

The cultivar grows throughout mainland Greece — in Aetolia-Acarnania, Laconia, Phthiotis, Messenia, Arcadia and Elis — and in recent years it has also been planted in Thessaly, Macedonia and Epirus and on Samos and Crete. Kalamon covers about 24% of the area of Greece's table-olive orchards and dominates new plantings.

Although it is considered suitable for oil as well, it is grown above all for Greek-style black olives. The fruit is picked once it has fully changed colour; it stands up well to processing and keeps its dark colour. The flesh is abundant and the stone comes away easily. Kalamon yields little oil, but that oil is of excellent quality and rich in polyphenols. Harvests are high but alternate from year to year. The tree tolerates saline soils and copes moderately with cold, but handles excessive heat poorly; the olive fly and verticillium wilt do it less harm than olive leaf spot.

On the jar. "Kalamata" printed on a jar does not by itself mean the olives come from the city of Kalamata. The protected name «Ελιά Καλαμάτας» (PDO) belongs only to olives from Messenia: the fruit is hand-picked from the tree when fully black, slit, cured in brine and covered with extra virgin olive oil. Such an olive weighs about 6 g on average, and the label carries the code "KA" with a number and a year. Kalamata olive oil is another matter: it is made mostly from a different cultivar, Koroneiki.