About us

The farmstead

Dehesa de Búlar S.L. is a young company created in 2017 to further develop the agricultural values of the Cortijo Nuevo de Búlar estate and market our premium organic extra virgin olive oil: Oilé by Dehesa de Búlar.

 

The estate is located in the Montes Orientales region, within the municipality of Píñar, just north of Sierra Arana and next to the Sierra de Huétor Natural Park. Since the beginning of the 1970´s the property is owned by the López Osorio family and currently has an area of ​​more than two hundred hectares, where centuries-old olive groves and more modern younger olive plantations thrive among sprawls of meadows and Mediterranean forest.

For more than two decades, our olive grove has been managed through organic farming methods and procedures, having obtained the CAAE-Ecovalia certificate in 2013, according to European Union regulations. Currently, one hundred and eighty hectares of ecological olive groves are cultivated with picual and hojiblanca varieties, creating an agricultural system with a high level of biodiversity thanks to the work carried out in soil conservation and the recovery of native vegetation in holm oaks meadows, pastures and bushland.

The management team

At the head of Dehesa de Búlar S.L. is its founder and CEO, Francisco López Osorio (Granada, 1974), farmer, forest engineer (University of Córdoba, 2002), master’s degree in Agricultural Enterprises Management (ETEA Granada, 2004) and master’s degree in Environment and International Cooperation for Development (EOI, Madrid 2008). With extensive experience in agroforestry and agricultural land management in Andalusia, he has also led international projects in the fields of environment and international cooperation for development in countries such as Afghanistan, Lebanon and Mexico.

 

 

The technical and agronomic management of the olive farm is ran by Rafael López Osorio (Granada, 1967), farmer and technical agricultural engineer (University of Almería, 1990). With more than twenty-five years of experience in olive grove management and sustainable management of agroecosystems in Andalusia, he has been one of the pioneers in the use of vegetation ground cover in olive groves to promote living soils, thus leading the process of conversion into organic farming in Búlar.

In charge of the exports of our premium organic extra virgin olive oil Oilé by Dehesa de Búlar, is Francisca Guzmán Lobo (Mexico City, 1983), Environmental Sciences graduate (Universidad Europea de Madrid, 2006) and master’s in International Cooperation for Development (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2007). With experience in several countries such as Mexico, Paraguay, Spain, Syria and Lebanon. She is leading our international expansion, in a first phase to Mexico, the United States and the European Union.

 

In addition to the management team, we rely on a group of experts of the highest level in their disciplines, such as agronomists, forestry engineers, biologists, ecologists, hydrologists, olive oil tasters, wine sommeliers, veterinarians, livestock farmers, graphic designers and Web programmers.

Our commitment social development and with the rural world

 

Together with the managers and experts already mentioned, the work team is completed with a large group of agricultural workers, linked to the farm for many years and committed to this shared project. These workers, of different origins and nationalities, live in the nearby towns of Píñar, Bogarre and Huélago; hence contributing to job creation and population settlement in the rural areas of the Montes Orientales.

In addition, our company contributes 0.7% of the annual benefits to MIRAME, the Association for the Support of Families and People with Autistic Spectrum Disorders in Granada, with which we have been collaborating and offering our facilities from the moment of its foundation.

Our commitment to the environment and against climate change

The commitment of Dehesa de Búlar S.L. with organic farming, the environment, the conservation of biodiversity and the fight against climate change goes far beyond the ecological certification of our products. We intend, therefore, to leave to the future generations a habitable and climatically balanced planet, with clean water and air, endowed with fertile and living soils that fix CO2 and biodiversity-rich ecosystems.

 

As for the conservation and recovery of the native fauna, we are in the process of establishing a collaboration agreement with the Ministry of Environment and Territory Planning of the Junta de Andalucía so that the Búlar farm is declared a refuge area for the endangered Iberian imperial eagle (Aquila adalberti). Likewise, we intend to contribute to the recovery of the natural habitat of the Iberian lynx (Linx pardinus), since we are located in the natural zone of expansion of the species, having already registered its occasional presence in the region. Within the perimeter of the farm we have created a Hunting Free Reserve Zone with an area of ​​twenty-four hectares, with the intention of serving as a refuge for the macrofauna present in the area and to maintain stable populations of common rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus), which is a main part of the diet of the most emblematic Iberian predators.

RD&i: Research + Development + Innovation

 

In Dehesa de Búlar S.L. We believe in applied research and in the development and innovation of scientific knowledge, so since 2014 we are collaborating with the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in the project entitled “Influence of Ecological Infrastructures of the Agrosistema del Olivar on the Biological Control of the pest Prays oleae (Lepidoptera plutellidae) “, Project of Excellence of the Junta de Andalucía (P12-AGR-1419) and co-financed with Feder Funds of the European Union.

 

In 2018 we have also initiated a collaboration with the Department of Nutrition and Bromatology of the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Granada in a project on the physicochemical characterization, the quantification of total polyphenols and the antioxidant capacity of our premium organic extra virgin olive oil, Oilé by Dehesa de Búlar.

Awards

Oilé by Dehesa de Búlar has been awarded in 2017 with a silver medal in the New York International Olive Oil Competition, one of the most prestigious awards in the world, and included in 2019 in the EVOOLEUM Guide of the 100 Best Extra Virgins in the world , published by MERCACEI.

 

Our future projects

 

Dehesa de Búlar S.L.  is a young company with many future aspirations. Among the projects we are working on to implement in the medium term, we can highlight the following:

  • The construction of an alpeorujo composting plant, in order to reincorporate all the by-products from the mill into the soil, once subjected to a composting process and later used as natural ecological fertilizer, thus closing the nutrient cycle on the farm.
  • Adaptation of existing facilities for use as an ecological oil mill, packing plant and storage, which will allow us to make our exquisite extra virgin olive oil, Premium Oilé by Dehesa de Búlar, on the farm itself.
  • Conditioning of rural houses and stables for agroecological tourism, wildlife observation, oil tourism and equestrian tourism. This project will allow us to share with the guests and visitors the daily experiences of the agroecosystem and to see firsthand its management model.