Cobnut, pumpkin & even olive: The rise of gourmet British oils

Clare Hargreaves

Clare is a Devon-based food writer who, since the Covid pandemic, has been eating only British foods as part of her efforts to live a more sustainable life. Author of several books and trained in horticulture, she writes for a range of national newspapers and magazines.

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When it comes to artisan cooking oil, you’ve probably heard of cold-pressed British rapeseed. But with rapeseed harvests in decline, what does the future look like for gourmet UK oil? Thanks to a small band of pioneering farmers, it’s looking bright: nut oils, pumpkin oil and even – whisper it – extra-virgin olive oil are all on the menu. Clare Hargreaves extracts the story…

Cobnut, pumpkin & even olive: The rise of gourmet British oils

Photograph: Getty Images

What kind of foodie gifts do you present to dinner party hosts? If you’re still taking mint wafers or a bottle of wine you could be behind the curve. According to trend-watchers, today’s must-bring is a bottle of artisan oil. And if the oil is British, even better…

Is rapeseed in decline?

For the past 20 years, Britain’s main oil offering has been rapeseed, either processed into ‘vegetable oil’ or cold-pressed into extra-virgin, with farmer Duncan Farrington’s Mellow Yellow leading the way. Despite fears that a product with ‘rape’ in the name could never take off, Farrington proved that rapeseed – when cold-pressed – was both nuttily tasty and reassuringly healthy. Others jumped on the cold-pressed rapeseed oil bandwagon.

Unfortunately, it’s not just humans who have an appetite for rapeseed. The cabbage stem flea beetle does too, ravaging crops, especially since 2013 when the EU banned the bee-killing neonicotinoid insecticides that helped to keep it at bay. With wet weather added to the mix, rapeseed is struggling. “The overall trend in UK rapeseed production is one of decline,” says a market analyst at the Agriculture And Horticulture Development Board. “The 2024 crop was over 60% smaller than the record largest crop harvested in 2017, and the smallest since 1983.”

Going nuts for new oils

While farmers like Farrington have stuck with rapeseed, others have been quietly producing other cold-pressed oils. In Kent, the traditional home of the cobnut (a type of hazelnut long grown in the UK), Hurstwood Farm has been pressing a cobnut oil that was voted Supreme Champion in the Great Taste Awards 2010.

"In Kent... Hurstwood Farm has been pressing a cobnut oil that was voted Supreme Champion in the Great Taste Awards of 2010."

Walnuts, first brought over here by the Romans, are being turned into oil by farmer David Tame in Warwickshire. Tame planted 800 walnut trees, which also provide shade for his grazing sheep. He swiftly learned that walnut is a hard nut to crack – and press. After six punishing years of shelling by hand around the family kitchen table, Tame splashed out on a fancy French machine to do the work and even managed to devise his own hydraulic press. His labours have paid off, with his liquid gold impressing both home cooks and Michelin-starred chefs like James Knappett, who drizzles it over dishes such as walnut ice cream and caviar at his Kitchen Table restaurant in London.

A field of David Tame’s walnut seedlings

Exploring new crops

More recently, buoyed by the rising popularity of plant-based foods, some farmers have been cold-pressing less traditional oil crops such as hemp, pumpkin and sunflower. British pumpkin seed oil came on stream almost by accident five years ago after Essex farmer Sam Hart got fed up with growing pumpkins for just one day of the year – Halloween. “Thousands went to waste so I thought there must be a better use for them,” says Hart, who manages Frinton Farms. After experiments using a press bought online, he determined the best seed for oil was a hull-less one from a pumpkin from Austria’s Styria region, which produces most of the world’s pumpkin seed oil. Its oil is dark amber with a delicately nutty taste. The flesh is used to fertilise the fields while the ‘cake’ left after pressing the seeds is dried and sold as protein powder.

Quality not quantity

The quantities of artisan oils such as walnut, cobnut and pumpkin are tiny compared to rapeseed, so price tags are unsurprisingly higher. Tame cold presses just 300 litres of walnut oil per year, charging £15 for a 250ml bottle, while Frinton Farms (pumpkin) and Hurstwood Farm (cobnut) each produce 500 litres of oil, selling it at £9.99 and £15.95 per 250ml respectively.

Tame and Hart both hope to ramp up production, given the strong demand from consumers who want provenance and sustainability. “Customers are keen to know how and where their food is produced,” says Tame. “They trust our oil is pure and produced without the use of chemicals or pesticides and they’re willing to pay a premium for that.”

A freshly peeled Tame walnut. Photo: John Cottle

"Customers are keen to know how and where their food is produced"

Trust is key. Following a string of scandals involving industrially produced oils (particularly olive), some consumers worry these products may not be what they claim on their labels, while others are wary of solvents such as hexane, a petroleum by-product, that are used to process refined (non-virgin) oils, says Tame. As the price of most of these oils has rocketed, the price gap between them and ‘niche’ British cold-pressed oils has narrowed, so many consumers feel it’s worth paying the extra for home-grown.

Can you really make olive oil in the UK?

With the climate only getting warmer, we may soon be enjoying another prized oil: home-grown olive oil. In Essex, farmer Pete Thompson has partnered with ingredients company Belazu to grow olives for extra-virgin olive oil. It’s a mission that’s defeated many a previous enthusiast but his olive grove, near the saltmarshes of Hamford Water, benefits from a maritime climate with hotter summers than anywhere in the UK.

Pete Thompson’s Essex olives. Photo: Clare Hargreaves

In November Thompson excitedly extracted the first drops of grass-green oil from his 1,650 trees. Laboratory tests will be needed to check the oil qualifies as extra-virgin, so it will be a while before we can drizzle it over our salads. But once it’s ready, a bottle will undoubtedly go down well with your dinner party hosts.