Above Tivat, our family has tended the same hillside olive groves for generations. Everything at Ollie’s Hotel by the Sea begins there, the oil, the Lumma kitchen, the spa rituals and the spirit of the house.
Long before Ollie’s was a hotel, it was a hillside of olive trees, planted in the slow soil above Donja Lastva and tended by the same family that runs the house today.
The oldest trees in the grove are over two hundred years old. They produce the first oil of every season. This is the story of the family, the bay, the olive oil and the way it quietly connects every part of the hotel.
Our grove sits on the southern slope above Tivat, with morning sun, the bay below and the cool maritime breeze that olives quietly love. Around six hundred trees grow here, and the oldest were planted in the early 1800s.
The grove is small by industrial standards, deliberately so. Every tree is hand-pruned in winter, and every olive is hand-picked in late autumn. The work is slow, and it cannot really be rushed.
The harvest begins in late October and lasts roughly three weeks. Family, friends and longtime workers arrive at dawn with nets, ladders and small wooden combs. We pick early, while the olives are still green, for oil with a stronger, brighter character.
The same day, the olives are taken to the local cold-press mill. Within a few hours of leaving the tree, the oil is already in the bottle. That speed is the reason it tastes the way it does.
Tree to bottle in less than a day. You can taste the hillside in the oil.
Our olive oil is unfiltered, cold-pressed and bottled in dark glass to protect it from light. We do not sell it on supermarket shelves, we make enough for the family, the hotel and guests who want to take a bottle home.
At Ollie’s, the oil appears everywhere: on the breakfast table with warm bread and herbs, in the Lumma kitchen, in spa rituals and in a small ceramic bottle waiting in your room on the first afternoon.
From the same oil, the family produces a small line of cosmetics: body oil, hand cream, face balm and soap. They are blended with herbs from our garden and made in small batches, only for the hotel and its guests.
You will find them in every bathroom, beside the bath at the spa and packaged as a small parting gift on the day you check out.
Body oil, hand cream, face balm and soap, small batches only for the house and its guests.
The same olive oil from the hillside above Tivat appears in four small moments during your stay, quietly and without announcement.
Bread, sea salt, fresh herbs and the first oil of the season on the morning table.
The foundation of many Lumma dishes, drizzled, poured or finished just before service.
Signature massages and rituals built around the seasonal oil and Mediterranean herbs.
A small ceramic bottle of olive oil, packed in linen for the journey home.
A hotel without a story is just a building with rooms. The story we keep telling is the one of a family, a hillside and a tree. The rest of Ollie’s is built around it.
Join us for a few days in the olive grove: pick at sunrise, visit the press during the day and taste the new olive oil at dinner.