About us · Molino & Cata

Our family has been in the olive groves of Jaén for six generations. Marino Uceda, Mercedes' father, a doctor of agricultural engineering, former principal investigator and former head of the IFAPA tasting panel, and an FAO consultant, helps us select every oil with his expertise.

We defend the olive grove as Jaén's livelihood. We are farmers: olives from our estate in Baeza have come from mills such as Melgarejo, Andrés Aguilar, and Oleícola Jaén, which have won awards in recent years.

For our customers, we show them the fruit by plot and variety, measure the ripeness index, and conduct laboratory and tasting tests to decide when to harvest. The calendar does not rule: the data does.

This is how our customers have won important awards in the last decade: several Jaén Selección awards with Jabalcuz, Oleícola Jaén, and Oleocampo, and the Mario Solinas Award from the International Olive Council, the most prestigious in the sector, which Jabalcuz (SCA Sierra de la Pandera) won in 2025.

We work with cooperatives such as Buensalud, Nuestra Señora del Castillo, and Andrés Aguilar to guide the mill master through the critical points: fruit reception, temperature and beating time, storage, and inerting. We support them in the most important decisions.

From the moment the olive leaves the tree, our job is to maintain its quality until the oil reaches the bottle.

Mercedes tastes every reference in the official International Olive Council tasting glass, so that color does not influence, and evaluates its persistence, complexity, and harmony. She scores every oil to decide which makes it onto our shop shelves.

Every time a new batch arrives, it is tasted again. When the campaign changes, we remove all references from the previous one and select them again from scratch.

We buy directly from every producer, without middlemen, and you pay the same as you would at the mill. Every reference passes through our warehouse: we do not do dropshipping.

More than half of the bottles we sell were bottled 16 days ago or less. This ensures not only quality, but the freshness of a product that is highly sensitive to changes. It is not enough for it to be from this campaign: it must be properly stored.

Mercedes holds a degree in the Expert in Extra Virgin Olive Oil Tasting program at the University of Jaén, and teaches courses at UNIA and IFAPA. In the olive oil shop, we guide tastings in Spanish and English and train hospitality teams.

We tell you what cannot fit on a label: guides on oil and videos that receive over four million views per month on social media. We help producers sell: brand, content, and channel.