Montenegrin olive oil and preserves

Olive growing around Bar and Ulcinj predates most countries — the old olive tree at Mirovica is over two thousand years old and still fruiting. Indigenous varieties, žutica above all, give an oil with more bitterness and pepper than buyers of Italian or Spanish oil expect. That is a characteristic, not a fault.

This category holds extra virgin olive oil, walnut and pumpkin-seed oils, and farmhouse jams, fruit butters and spreads made without industrial thickeners. For oil, ask for the harvest year, the variety and confirmation that it was cold-pressed; for jams, ask the fruit-to-sugar ratio and whether it was cooked in copper or enamel.