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However, there are also trees along the banks of the Hunter River near Belford, believed to be wild trees that can be traced to a long-abandoned planting from the 1830s. The only way to be sure is to cut down the tree, and that sort of defeats the purpose!
In the 1990s a revival of plantings throughout the Hunter Valley has seen over 200,000 new trees planted in areas is widespread as Merriwa, Scone, Muswellbrook, Singleton, Broke, Laguna, Pokolbin, Maitland, Cessnock, Gresford and the foothills of the Barrington Tops.
This huge range of climates and soils is likely to produce a wide range of flavours and styles of both olive oil and table olives. However, as the first crops were only picked in 2000, and most of the groves are still host to juvenile trees, it is unlikely that we will see any definitive "Hunter Character" emerge for a few years yet.
