Cover Alia Ballout founded Beît Ballout to sell olive oil from her family’s olive grove in the south of Lebanon (Photo: Getty Images)
Alia Ballout founded Beît Ballout to sell olive oil from her family’s olive grove in the south of Lebanon (Photo: Getty Images)
1 / 1
Beît Ballout, run by Alia Ballout, sets out to tell the stories of her heritage with olive oil made in her family’s grove in the south of Lebanon
Other people carry lip gloss and mascara in their bags. 26-year-old Alia Ballout carries samples of her family’s olive oil. Laugh as you will, but the ability to whip out her hero product on a whim has bagged her contracts with some of Singapore’s best restaurants, including Popi’s at Mandala Club, Wooloomooloo Steakhouse, Suzuki by Kengo Kuma, and Hashida (chef-owner Kenjiro “Hatch” Hashida drizzles his desserts with them). The consensus from chefs is that her olive oil, made from olives in her family’s grove in the south of Lebanon, boasts so much flavour in comparison to other extra virgin olive oils on the market.
It certainly is a matter of pride for Ballout, who runs Singaporean olive oil company Beît Ballout as a one-woman show. But the company means much more to her than personal achievement—to her, it tells the story of her parents, a Singaporean-Chinese woman and a Lebanese man who found kindred spirits as outsiders; it tells the story of Ballout’s uniquely Singaporean heritage as a made-in-Singapore brand; and it tells the story of the Levantine communities built around the tradition of olive picking and olive oil production.
Don’t miss: From Tea Masters to Olive Oil Experts: Meet the Different Types of Sommeliers in Singapore
The seed of Beît Ballout was planted in 2023, when Ballout was a part of the opening team for the Mondrian Singapore Duxton. There, a chef revealed to her that the market for olive oil was quite shallow. The gears started shifting; she moved to register her company immediately and began bringing olive oil harvested from her family’s grove over to Singapore.
Unlike some families in the Levant, and the Mediterranean, her family only recently purchased their grove in 2018, and takes care to process the olives in the traditional way. All the olives are hand-picked, unlike commercial producers which use tree-shakers, which can bruise the olives and quicken the fermentation process, affecting the taste of the olive oil. The olives are also pressed for their oil within four to six hours, unlike the commercial standard of 16 hours, preserving as much flavour as possible.
Above The Beît Ballout chateau and olive groves that Alia Ballout’s family owns in the south of Lebanon (Photo: Courtesy of Alia Ballout)
The Beît Ballout chateau and olive groves that Alia Ballout’s family owns in the south of Lebanon (Photo: Courtesy of Alia Ballout)
1 / 1
At Beît Ballout, olive oil is also made in the traditional way—cold-pressed by grinding on granite wheels to extract the oil—instead of hot-pressing olives, the de rigeur for commercial brands. “It’s faster,” Ballout accepts, but points out that the polyphenols, antioxidants and aromatic compounds that make olive oil so healthy and taste so great are “sensitive to heat”; hot-pressing olives would degrade them and leave a “residue” on top and a “bitterness” on the palate. Thus cold-pressing, which produces an olive oil with a shorter shelf life, is much healthier and tastier by keeping those taste and antioxidant compounds intact. Good quality olive oil, Ballout insists, also has a colour that’s not too light—be wary of any bottles that claim to sell “extra light” olive oil.
Read more: What you need to know about Wagyu, according to restaurateur Sam Chua
Above The Ballout olive grove grows Soury, Nabli, and Baladi olives to make olive oil (Photo: Courtesy of Alia Ballout)
The Ballout olive grove grows Soury, Nabli, and Baladi olives to make olive oil (Photo: Courtesy of Alia Ballout)
1 / 1
Ballout’s insistence on traditional methods harkens back to the Levant’s long history of cultivating olives. There is evidence to suggest that the cultivation of olives in the southern Levant—a region that includes present-day Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, and Israel—goes back about 6,500 years BP (before present), about 500 years before Crete did, and before the practice spread to the rest of the Mediterranean including Italy and the Ibérian peninsula. Even the types of olives grown in this region are different from those found in Greece, Italy or the Ibérian peninsula.
Ballout’s family grows Soury, Nabli, and Baladi olives, which, she finds, yields an olive oil that is sweeter and subtler than its European counterparts.
Above The goats that graze on the Ballout olive groves (Photo: Courtesy of Alia Ballout)
The goats that graze on the Ballout olive groves (Photo: Courtesy of Alia Ballout)
1 / 1
Because of its long history, Ballout tells us that the tradition of cultivating olives in the Levant is built on a sense of community. The act of olive-picking, as Ballout tells it, is communal, touched with a “connection” to the olive tree. “My father has a very spiritual affinity with the trees,” Ballout says. “We do it all by feeling, touching, and intuition. He believes you have to treat the trees with respect, so that’s why we don’t shake them.”
It’s also why her family insists on pesticide- and chemical-free cultivation; the trees are fertilised instead by the goats that graze on the land. When the olive-picking season arrives in October, Ballout tells us, her father, Adib Ballout, makes sure to harvest them after the first rain, which signifies the start of the season. “Sometimes he’ll stay up till three or four in the morning,” she says.
In case you missed it: Why white truffle is a prized delicacy in the culinary world, according to an expert
Above Seasonal workers picking olives to make olive oil at the Ballout olive grove (Photo: Courtesy of Alia Ballout)
Seasonal workers picking olives to make olive oil at the Ballout olive grove (Photo: Courtesy of Alia Ballout)
1 / 1
Community is also the reason why the company makes sure to hire refugees from Palestinian and Syrian camps that are prevalent in the south of Lebanon. “It’s like saying, ‘Why is it important to drink water every day?’”, she says when we ask why it is so important that community is so intertwined with Beît Ballout’s production. “It’s not even questionable. I want to shy away from making my brand political, but I don’t think telling stories that are based on truth, fact, and people’s experiences are political. I’m talking about real people who have been displaced.”
Above View of the mountainous region where the olive groves are from the Ballout’s chateau (Photo: Courtesy of Alia Ballout)
View of the mountainous region where the olive groves are from the Ballout’s chateau (Photo: Courtesy of Alia Ballout)
1 / 1
Not too far in Gaza, Al-Jazeera has reported that the Israeli military has been bombing or spraying olive groves with pesticides. The Guardian has also reported that in the West Bank, Israeli authorities have cut off Palestinian farmers from their olive groves. It doesn’t escape Ballout that the same variety of olive trees that her family grows are the same ones being razed to the ground. The south of Lebanon, after all, shares an uneasy border with Israel, and is a stone’s throw away from the Palestinian territories.
Her own grandfather was a journalist who covered political developments in the region, having shaken hands with Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Abdel Nasser, the former President of Egypt. The personal is, as it so often is, political, but rather than shy away from what can be painful and traumatic stories, Ballout has made the company an endeavour in “storytelling”—one that centres the stories of the people who give the Levant its life and blood.
“I want to educate people more about the region, about its olive oil and its high quality,” she says, refuting a profit-driven motive in favour of simple enjoyment and awareness. “I want people to understand this part of the world not for what we export, which is usually chaos and destruction, but for our food, our produce, and our methods.”
Ethan Kan was Tatler Singapore’s dining writer.
