This was not my first time in Provence. About nine years ago, I backpacked my way through France and this beautiful part of the country. I met up with my brother in Lyon and the two of us travelled together for a week or so. One of our stops was in Avignon, the capital of the Vaclause area. While strolling through the cobble streets of this ancient walled city, whilst turning some arbitrary corner and sitting in amongst a hundred other beautiful little places that could have caught my eye, we came across a small shop in Rue St-Agricol. I walked in and…drumroll please….ta-da, my life changed. It was the first time ever that I saw an olive shop. I could not believe that you can do that much with olives (and then package it so prettily!) The shop was stocked to the ceiling with the finest oils, tapenades and pastes, lots of beauty products made from olives and all the little extra accessories one might need to enjoy the products. More than that, the shop’s styling, from the bonsai olive tree centrepiece to the rustic wooden shelves simply transported you into olive country from the threshold onwards. You felt like a connoisseur, like someone who lives a better and more grounded life by just walking in and browsing…
Back home I told everyone about this amazing little shop as one of the highlights of my trip. All of a sudden my eyes opened to the huge variety of products made in South Africa. At that stage South Africa had about 150 olive farms, with most of their products only available from the farms or well stocked supermarkets in the Western Cape. In Johannesburg you were lucky to find South African oils in any shop. Very few people knew that we made olive jams, olive chutneys, olive mustards and even olive chocolates in South Africa. And no one had ever pulled it all together in one location.
So, after a bit of soul-searching (I loved my corporate job!) and many months of writing and re-writing a business plan, Tapenade Olive Shop, named after the olive, capers & anchovy paste, opened its doors in the Cresta Shopping Centre. Our concept was, and still is, to be a strictly South African olive shop, showcasing the local industries incredible range of quality and innovative products.
But it all started in Avignon and on this trip I was lucky enough to visit the shop again. It’s still there, it’s still charming and I’d like to think that if I saw it for the first time two weeks ago, it would have been love at first sight again…
You can read more about this company on their website. Click here.
Image credits: All photography by me
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