Olives et al

From the moment you enter this pleasingly uncluttered site, a Mediterranean mood takes hold. Maybe it's the terracotta-coloured pages (with white text, rather unusually), or maybe the mood that informs the pages - with word like ‘pleasure', ‘nourishment', ‘celebration' and ‘passionate' picked out in bold in the introductory text, it's hard not to get caught up in it.

Down the left-hand side of all the pages a series of boxes help you to navigate round the site, while on the right of some pages you can choose to look at recipes, register for regular e-mail updates and read olive-related tips. The shopping part of this site is easy to use, partly because the range is quite limited. There are just 10 product groups to choose from, listed down the middle of the page. These include not only olive oils and marinated, speciality and smoked olives, but also sauces, gifts, books, snacks and kitchen accessories (only two actually). Along the top and bottom of each page within the shop are the usual features: search, basket and checkout - all self-explanatory.



SPECIAL FEATURES



Olive expert is a mine of information about olives - historical, mythical, culinary and medical. There is even a page on using olive oil in beauty treatments. Just as interesting is the information on how olive oil is produced, and what distinguishes different categories of oil.



Recipes is a fairly short section to which visitors to the site are invited to add their own contributions. All the recipes are straightforward and very enticing. Ingredients available from the site are highlighted and connect back to the shopping pages.