Some olive oil producers inherit centuries of family land. The Cuadrat Valley project did something special: they reclaimed their familial soul with a return to Catalonia lands where the maternal family originated – and at its heart, a mill carved into the living rock.
Building From Bare Parcels
Starting in 2014, Evelyne Cuadrat Teycheney set out to build something new in L’Albagés, the place her family had always belonged to — acquiring and consolidating parcels one at a time until she’d assembled a single 90-hectare estate. Cuadrat Valley is not a legacy that was handed down through the generations, but built deliberately, from scratch: rare in this business.
Of those 90 hectares, 62 are planted with olives. The rest is left as native Mediterranean forest, shrubland, almond orchards, and even a truffle oak grove — an ecosystem tended with the same care as the fruit itself.
Land Shaped by Stone
The landscape that surrounds the groves is unmistakable: terraces, vaulted stone huts, and small stone watering structures built by generations of farmers to hold water and soil on unforgiving terrain. This dry-stone architecture is recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage — not a scenic backdrop but living evidence of centuries of human patience shaping the land.
It’s fitting terrain for Arbequina, Catalonia’s defining olive. The variety takes its name from the nearby town of Arbeca, where legend holds the Duke of Medinaceli first introduced it from Palestine in the 18th century. Arbequina has since become one of the world’s most celebrated cultivars — buttery, low in bitterness, aromatically complex — and it sits at the center of the Les Garrigues PDO, Spain’s oldest olive oil appellation, established in 1975.
Built for Speed, Hidden in the Hills
Cuadrat Valley’s
processing facility was engineered around one governing idea: olives should move from tree to press within minutes of harvest. Rather than sitting beside the groves, the mill is carved into the hillside itself — cut directly out of the rock, so the building and the land are the same structure.
Designed by a father/son architecture firm who worked in close collaboration with the Teycheney family, the building draws inspiration from winemaking, incorporating nitrogen systems to minimize oxidation during extraction and underground chambers cut into the stone where the oil rests and stabilizes before bottling. It’s one of the most technologically advanced olive oil operations anywhere — architectural ambition carved into the earth.
Two Oils, One Olive
Cuadrat Valley oils are made of Arbequina olives — yet timing and technique give them entirely different characters, as you’ll see below. Each carries the prestigious Les Garrigues PDO designation, a mark with real history behind it. Les Garrigues is where Arbequina originated, and it holds a unique distinction: it was Spain’s first-ever designation of origin for any food product, granted in 1975, more than 20 years before it received official EU PDO certification in 1996.
Elixir Despinyolada
is Cuadrat Valley’s most ambitious expression — one of the few pitted extra virgin olive oils made in the world. The olives are harvested as early as mid-September, still fiercely green, then de-stoned entirely before pressing: a painstaking technique that lets only the flesh reach the mill. It sounds like a small mechanical detail. It isn’t. Removing the pit sharpens aromatic purity, concentrates polyphenols, and gives the oil a longer, more resilient life in the bottle. The result doesn’t whisper. It’s vivid, green, herbaceous — cut grass, artichoke, a clean bitter edge — with structure and a finish that lingers. Just 12,000 bottles a year, this estate EVOO meant to be opened, poured generously, and finished while that early-harvest intensity is still at its peak.
Fontfleurie
is an early harvest EVOO, focused on olives that have reached full aromatic maturity while retaining freshness. Fontfleurie is made from impeccably selected olives from Cuadrat Valley and nearby estates. It is smooth and generous, carrying notes of green herbs, ripe red fruit, banana, almond, and tomato, with a silky, medium-intensity texture. Equally at home finishing a dish or anchoring commercial and home kitchens. Available in 500ml bottles, 2L and 5L bag-in-box.
The People Behind the Oil
None of this — the architecture, the equipment, the terroir — makes the oil on its own.
Master Miller & Team
At the helm is Master Miller Sergi Garcia
, who brings more than 15 years of experience milling in several countries to every batch that runs through Cuadrat Valley’s press. Behind him stands an in-house Oleo tourism expert, Blanca Casañola and Export Manager, Wioleta Paduch, with decades of experience building lasting relationships, creating trust, and connecting people on the international market through a shared passion for excellence.
Production
Ignacio Segura, with 25+ years crafting EVOO across Spain, Morocco, and South Africa, designed the mill’s technological process. His philosophy combines innovation, scientific precision, and profound respect for tradition, pursuing a single objective: to produce extraordinary olive oils that authentically express the identity of their terroir.
Past and Future, coexisting
What makes Cuadrat Valley remarkable is not only the quality in the bottle. It is the way the estate holds two truths at once: a landscape etched with centuries of Catalan tradition, and a production philosophy built entirely around what is technologically possible today. Honoring the past here did not mean resisting the future — it meant building something new on grounds the family had always called home.
