The Aubocassa ( Albocasser ) farm is in Majorca in the area of Manacor, in the east of the island, one of the few places where the flavour of rural Majorca has managed to survive.

The farm is an ancient property, referred to in 12 th century documents and on which history has left traces of the different crops that have shaped the Majorcan countryside. The ullastres are an unequivocal testimony to an oil-producing past; the celler talks about its vine-growing splendour; the farmyards and the luxuriant pleta recall past livestock breeding; the old rainwater catchment tanks show the Mediterranean philosophy of making use of resources; and the almond, fig and carob trees are the agricultural stamp of the 19 th and 20 th centuries.

The small church on the farm has been witness to this evolution and presides, next to its two cypresses, over the resurgence of the olive groves and its unsuspected oil.

The soils are made up of limestone formed in layers of weathered stone containing accumulations of fertile clay. The tree roots take advantage of small cracks and push through the layers to seek out nourishment in the lower floors.

DAURO was born on a farm in the Empordà, which is in the province of Girona, in the areas of Siurana and Torroella de Fluviá, a few kilometres from the Empurias Roman ruins.

The Pyrenees and the Mediterranean, the sea and the mountains, have always forged the character of the Empordanès.

There are different types of soil, but they are mostly made up of a layer of variable depth of loam and gravel, over loose limestone, allowing excellent scope for the rooting system to develop.

In the Empordà there is one aspect of the climate which leaves its mark on vegetal life, as well as the landscape, it is the north wind, the tramontana , an intense and continuous wind which, when it blows at midday, obliges the olive trees to bow respectfully. The tramuntana sweeps away the clouds and cleans the sky, leaving incredible transparency and light. Light and aeration, the two great physiological requirements of the olive tree.

Up till 1956 all of these lands were olive groves, but on a fateful February morning a frost devastated the plantations. During the second half of the 20th century cereals and alfalfa colonized these soils, until our DAURO project restored to the landscape the tree which had been with it since the invasion of the Roman Empire.