Kalamata Olives: The Cultivar, the Cure, and What the Label Guarantees
Kalamata olives are the dark, almond-shaped fruit that most people picture when they think of a Greek olive, and they are also one of the most loosely used words in the deli aisle. The name is doing several jobs at once: it is a city in the southwest Peloponnese, it is the common English name of a cultivar the Greeks call Kalamon, and it is a protected designation with a file number and a registration date behind it. Some of what is sold as Kalamata sits inside that designation and some of it does not, and the label is not always obliged to tell you which. This article sets out what a Kalamata olive actually is, how it is cured, and what the registers and the international standard genuinely promise.
For our own oil, see our cold-pressed organic Marrakech olive oil. We do not sell table olives, and nothing in this article is trying to sell you any.
The Short Answer
- Kalamata is a cultivar and a place, and the fruit has its own protected designation. The European Union register eAmbrosia lists Ελιά Καλαμάτας / Elia Kalamatas as a Protected Designation of Origin, file number PDO-GR-0030, registered on 21 June 1996 under Official Journal L 148 of that date.
- That is a different registration from the oil. Καλαμάτα / Kalamata, file number PDO-GR-0037, is the olive oil designation, protected from 13 June 1997 and filed under oils and fats. The fruit sits under edible vegetables and preparations of vegetables and fruit.
- The Greek name of the cultivar is Kalamon. Kalamata is the anglicised form, and the two words have been treated as interchangeable in Greek marketing law since a decree in 2022.
- The file is not Greek-language material alone. eAmbrosia carries an English-language summary sheet against PDO-GR-0030, and we fetched and read it for this article.
- They are black olives, but not the kind in a sliced can. Under the Codex standard for table olives, a Kalamata is a black olive by type and a natural olive by trade preparation — fermented in brine rather than darkened by oxidation.
- Curing is slow and pressing is fast. Table olives spend weeks or months in brine losing their bitterness; oil olives go from tree to mill in hours. They are two completely different processes applied to the same species.
- The variety on a jar is optional. Codex standard CXS 66-1981 requires the type, the trade preparation, the style and the size to appear on or near the product name. The name of the variety and the trade category are both listed as optional.
- Sidr & Stone sells olive oil, not olives. What carries across from one to the other is the same habit: read the registration and the specification, not the adjective on the front.
What a Kalamata Olive Actually Is
The Kalamata is a large, firm, deep purple-to-black fruit with a distinctly almond shape and a taut skin that holds up in brine for months. It is grown principally in Messinia, the southwestern corner of the Peloponnese, whose capital is the city of Kalamata. The cultivar's Greek name is Kalamon; Kalamata is the anglicisation that travelled with the export trade and then stuck.
It is a table olive by vocation rather than by chemistry. The fruit is not short of oil, but it is large, handsome and firm-fleshed, and a fruit like that earns more whole in a jar than crushed at a mill. For the full account of why the region's oil is made from a different, much smaller variety, see our guide to Kalamata olive oil.
Like every olive, it is inedible off the tree. The bitterness comes from oleuropein, and removing it is the entire point of curing — a process our piece on olives and oil covers in general terms.
Two Registrations, One Name
This is the part almost no shopping guide gets right, and it is checkable in about two minutes. The European Commission's geographical indications register, eAmbrosia, carries the Kalamata name three separate times, in three different product categories. We pulled the full register — 4,011 entries — on 28 August 2026 and filtered it.
| Registered name | File number | Type | What it covers | Protected from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ελιά Καλαμάτας / Elia Kalamatas | PDO-GR-0030 | PDO | The fruit. Filed under edible vegetables (CN 07) and preparations of vegetables, fruit and nuts (CN 20) | 21 June 1996 |
| Καλαμάτα / Kalamata | PDO-GR-0037 | PDO | The olive oil. Filed under oils and fats | 13 June 1997 |
| Ούζο Καλαμάτας / Ouzo of Kalamata | PGI-GR-01840 | Spirit drink GI | The ouzo. A spirit drink geographical indication, not a food PDO | 13 February 2008 |
All three were shown as registered, with no removal flag and no amendment in progress, on the day we checked. The practical consequence is that a jar of PDO Kalamata olives and a bottle of PDO Kalamata olive oil are governed by two different specifications and two different files. They are not two forms of one protected product.
A correction to something this article previously said: the documents behind PDO-GR-0030 are not Greek-language material alone. eAmbrosia carries an English-language summary sheet against the file — the application for registration made under Article 17, submitted by the Union of Agricultural Cooperatives of the Prefecture of Messinia and stamped with the Commission's own reference for GR/0030 — and we fetched and read it rather than taking anyone's word for it. It names the product simply as table olives of the Kalamata variety. It draws the geographical area as the administrative boundaries of the Prefecture of Messinia, and records that the product is produced solely from olives grown in that zone. Its production method is four steps: the olives are picked from the tree by hand when fully ripe and black, then scored, washed and soaked in brine to ripen, and the finished product is distributed in tins filled with extra virgin Kalamata olive oil. Its labelling requirement is the PDO name together with a control code of KA, a label serial number and the last two digits of the year of production. What that summary does not carry is a fruit-size grading or a stated curing time, so we are still not going to tell you what the specification says about either.
How Kalamata Olives Are Cured, and Why That Is Not Pressing
The international reference here is the Codex Alimentarius Standard for Table Olives, CXS 66-1981 — adopted in 1981, revised in 1987 and 2013, and amended in 2022, 2023 and 2024. It defines a table olive as fruit that has been "treated to remove its bitterness and preserved by natural fermentation, and/or by heat treatment, and/or by other means".
Kalamata falls into the category the standard calls natural olives: fruit "placed directly in brine in which they undergo complete or partial fermentation, preserved or not by the addition of acidifying agents". No lye. No oxidation. Salt, water, time and the lactic acid bacteria and yeasts the standard explicitly allows to remain in the packing medium. The standard sets a floor of 6.0% sodium chloride and a ceiling of pH 4.3 for natural olives in brine — the two numbers that make the jar shelf-stable. The English summary sheet for PDO-GR-0030 describes the same broad process in one line: scored, washed and soaked in brine to ripen.
Pressing is the opposite discipline. Oil olives are crushed within hours of picking, and the aim is to get the oil out before it oxidises. Curing wants months; milling wants minutes.
| Table olive (Kalamata) | Olive oil | |
|---|---|---|
| Governing standard | Codex CXS 66-1981 | Codex CXS 33-1981; IOC trade standard |
| What happens to the fruit | Debittered and fermented whole in brine | Crushed, malaxed and separated |
| Timescale | Weeks to months | Hours from tree to mill |
| What is sold | The flesh, with the brine as packing medium | The oil only; flesh and stone are residue |
| Key specification numbers | Minimum 6.0% sodium chloride, maximum pH 4.3 for natural olives | Free acidity, peroxide value, UV absorbance, sensory panel |
| Variety on the label | Optional under CXS 66-1981 | Optional, though named single-varietal oils are common |
Codex also permits vinegar and oil as ingredients alongside the brine — either olive oil as defined in CXS 33-1981 or other edible vegetable oils under CXS 210-1999. A jar of Kalamata olives sitting in oil is therefore not necessarily sitting in olive oil, and the ingredients panel is the only place that question gets answered. The PDO summary sheet is more specific than Codex on this point for its own product: it says the ready product is distributed in tins filled with extra virgin Kalamata olive oil.
Are Kalamata Olives Black Olives?
Yes and no, and the standard is precise about it. Under Codex CXS 66-1981 a Kalamata is a black olive by type, meaning fruit harvested fully ripe or slightly before. But by trade preparation it is a natural olive, fermented in brine. The sliced black olives sold in cans are a different category entirely: green or colour-turning fruit darkened by oxidation.
That distinction is worth carrying to the shelf, because it explains the difference in taste that people notice and usually attribute to quality. A naturally fermented black olive has been fermented; an olive darkened by oxidation has been oxidised in an alkaline medium, then heat-sterilised in a sealed container to a uniform brown-to-black colour. One is a fermented food, the other is a processed one, and they do not taste alike because they are not made alike.
What we are not going to tell you is that one is healthier than the other. That question comes up constantly in searches around this topic, and the honest answer is that these are foods, the differences in composition are modest, and neither is a treatment for anything.
Reading the Jar: What Must Be Said, and What May Be Left Out
Section 8 of CXS 66-1981 sets out what belongs on a retail pack. The product name is "olives" or "table olives", and four things must appear as part of it or in close proximity: the type, the trade preparation, the style, and the size. Two things are explicitly listed as optional: the trade category and the name of the variety.
That last one is the gap. A jar can say Kalamata as a brand flourish, as a style descriptor, as a genuine varietal claim, or as a place-of-origin claim under the PDO — and the standard does not require it to tell you which of those it means.
| On the jar | What it commits the producer to | Where to look |
|---|---|---|
| PDO mark plus Elia Kalamatas | Origin and specification under PDO-GR-0030, including the control code KA, a label serial number and the last two digits of the production year | Front of pack, next to the EU PDO symbol |
| "Kalamata" alone | Nothing specific. It may be varietal, geographic or descriptive | Read the origin and ingredients panel |
| Trade preparation | Natural, treated, dehydrated, or darkened by oxidation — a real processing claim | Required on or near the product name |
| Style | Whole, cracked, split, stoned, halved, sliced or stuffed | Required, though it may be omitted on glass jars |
| Size | Graded by count per kilogramme, from 60/70 through 381/410 and beyond | Required, though not on transparent packs |
| Variety name | Optional under Codex | Only present if the producer chooses to print it |
Two further numbers are worth knowing. Codex sets a minimum drained weight of 50% for whole olives and 40% for stoned or stuffed ones, calculated against the container's water capacity — so a jar is allowed to be substantially brine. And the optional trade categories run "Extra", "Fancy" or "A"; "First", "Choice" or "Select" or "B"; and "Second" or "Standard" or "C". If a pack claims Extra, that word has a defect tolerance behind it.
The Objections Worth Taking Seriously
"You sell olive oil, so you would say the label matters." We do sell olive oil, and we do not sell table olives at all, so there is nothing here for us to steer you towards. We would rather name that than have you notice it silently. The reason we wrote this is that the Kalamata name is the single clearest example in food retail of one word doing four jobs, and it is a useful lesson wherever it is learnt.
"The Kalamata name has been opened up anyway, so the PDO is meaningless." Not quite. Olive Oil Times reported on 30 April 2024, in a piece by Costas Vasilopoulos, that the Greek Council of State had dismissed an appeal by Messinian producers against a 2022 ministerial decree treating "Kalamon" and "Kalamata" as equivalent, freeing Greek growers of the cultivar outside Messinia to use the Kalamata name. We have not read the decision itself and we are reporting it as reported. What we can confirm directly is that PDO-GR-0030 was still shown as registered on eAmbrosia, with no amendment in progress, when we checked on 28 August 2026. A varietal name being widely usable and a designation of origin still standing are two compatible facts.
"A designation guarantees quality." It does not, and this is the point that generalises. A PDO ties a product to a place and a specification. It says nothing about whether this jar was packed last season or three years ago, how it was stored, or whether the producer is any good. Origin marks are a floor. They are not a verdict.
Why Sidr & Stone
We came to this topic sideways — a reader asked whether the olives and the oil were the same thing, and the honest answer turned out to be a register lookup and a standard. That is the whole of our claim to authority here: we read the primary documents, we say which ones we could not read, we correct ourselves when we find we could have read one after all, and we tell you what we found. Our own product is oil, and it is deliberately unexciting in composition.
- Single-estate — one family-owned grove on the plains outside Marrakech, Morocco, with no blending across origins.
- Rain-fed — no irrigation; the trees take what the season gives them.
- Organically grown — no synthetic fertilisers, pesticides or herbicides. We do not hold a formal organic certificate and we do not claim one.
- Single harvest — a small batch, once a season, picked when the fruit is ready rather than when the calendar says so.
- Cold-pressed within hours of harvest — flavour, aroma and polyphenols preserved by keeping the gap between picking and pressing short.
- Unfiltered extra virgin — minimally processed, and it may show natural sediment, which is normal for an unfiltered oil.
- 100% natural — one ingredient, and nothing added to it.
- 500 ml dark glass with a gold label — protective packaging in a size built to be finished fresh.
- Halal certified, with 10% of profits to charity as a brand-wide commitment.
- Fulfilment in the UK, EU, and US.
We will not tell you Sidr & Stone is the best olive oil — that would be exactly the kind of unbacked adjective this article is about. We publish no polyphenol figure for our oil yet, and we would rather say so plainly than imply one. What we will say is that it is single-estate Moroccan, rain-fed, organically grown and cold-pressed within hours of harvest. For the wider set of things a bottle can genuinely tell you, see our guide to choosing a quality olive oil.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is special about Kalamata olives?
Size, shape and cure. They are a large, firm, almond-shaped fruit of the Kalamon cultivar, fermented whole in brine rather than treated with lye or darkened by oxidation, which gives them the winey, fruity depth people associate with the name. The Greek fruit also has its own protected designation, Elia Kalamatas, PDO-GR-0030.
Are Kalamata olives black olives?
By type, yes — Codex CXS 66-1981 classifies fruit harvested fully ripe as black olives. By trade preparation they are natural olives, fermented in brine. The sliced black olives in cans are a separate Codex category: green or colour-turning fruit darkened by oxidation and heat-sterilised.
What is the difference between Kalamata olives and regular olives?
"Regular" usually means a green Spanish-style olive treated with lye, or a canned olive darkened by oxidation. A Kalamata is neither. It is a specific cultivar, harvested ripe and fermented naturally in brine, which is a different process and produces a different texture and taste.
Do Kalamata olives have to come from Kalamata?
Only if the pack carries the PDO. Elia Kalamatas ties the designation to a defined area of Greece — the English summary sheet on eAmbrosia draws it as the administrative boundaries of the Prefecture of Messinia. The word Kalamata used on its own is also widely used as a cultivar name, and the Codex standard treats the variety name on a table-olive label as optional.
Is Kalamata a variety or a place?
Both, which is the source of nearly all the confusion. Kalamata is a city in Messinia and the anglicised name of the Kalamon cultivar. The European register carries the name three times over: for the fruit, for the olive oil, and for the local ouzo. The English summary sheet filed against the fruit's PDO is worth reading if you want the specification in the applicant's own words.
How are Kalamata olives cured?
They are placed directly in brine and allowed to ferment, completely or partially, with acidifying agents permitted but no alkaline treatment. Codex requires natural olives in brine to reach at least 6.0% sodium chloride and no more than pH 4.3. Vinegar and oil may be added as ingredients, and the PDO summary sheet says the finished product is packed in tins filled with extra virgin Kalamata olive oil.
Does Sidr & Stone sell Kalamata olives?
No. We sell a single-estate Moroccan extra virgin olive oil and no table olives of any kind. This article exists because the Kalamata name is the clearest lesson on any food shelf in how to read a designation, and that lesson transfers directly to the oil aisle.
Is olive oil a medicine?
No. Olive oil is a food, not a medicine. It has a long traditional history — including being honoured in the Prophetic Sunnah — and a substantial body of modern research, particularly around polyphenols, cardiovascular health, and the Mediterranean diet pattern. It can be a worthwhile part of a healthy routine, but it does not cure diseases and is not a substitute for medical care. Be cautious of any olive oil marketed with specific disease-cure claims.
Final Thoughts
Kalamata is a good olive with a complicated name, and the complication is not anyone's fault. A city lent its name to a cultivar, the cultivar travelled, and the law arrived afterwards to sort out who could say what. What is left for a shopper is a jar with a famous word on it and a specification that may or may not sit behind that word — and, in this case, a specification summary anyone can read in English if they go looking for it.
The two useful habits are small. Look for the PDO symbol if origin is what you are buying, and read the trade preparation, because "natural" and "darkened by oxidation" are genuinely different foods sold under the same colour. Everything else on the front of the pack is a choice the producer made, not a promise the standard extracted.
That is the same habit we apply to our own aisle, where a cultivar guide such as Koroneiki olive oil or a look at what single-estate actually commits a producer to does more for a buyer than any adjective. Our cold-pressed organic Marrakech olive oil — single-estate, rain-fed, organically grown and unfiltered — is available to pre-order, with fulfilment in the UK, EU, and US. First harvest, estimated shipping from November 2026.
Pre-Order Sidr & Stone Organic Marrakech Olive Oil — Limited First Harvest →
Disclaimer: This article describes the Kalamata designations, the Codex standard for table olives and typical commercial practice as they stood at the time of writing on 28 August 2026; register entries, standards and product specifications may change, and readers should check current sources. The English summary sheet for PDO-GR-0030 described above was fetched and read from eAmbrosia on that date. Comparisons are made in good faith and in fair terms. Olive oil is a food, not a medicine, and is not a substitute for medical treatment of any condition. For any health concern, consult a qualified medical professional.