From AC/DC and Coca-Cola to olive oil: Rosa Vañó's big career swerve

Imagine going from tour-level rock stars to olive groves. That is exactly what Rosa Vañó did, and her first step into the new world was a surprisingly practical one: she signed up for cooking classes.

What was her career before olive oil? 🎸

Vañó studied economics and, at 23, landed in the music industry. She worked at Warner Music and Universal, alongside AC/DC and global names such as Prince, Luis Miguel and Phil Collins.

From there she moved to Coca-Cola, where she stayed for more than ten years. At 40, she left that American dream behind and joined the family business: Castillo de Canena, an olive oil brand.

"I thought I knew everything and had no idea what I was facing," she says, laughing.

How did she change the brand?

The brand was created by her father, Luis Vañó, at the family's olive farm and mill in Canena, in the province of Jaén (southern Spain). In 2003, she and her brother Francisco set out to transform it. It had started out selling bulk oil. Today it is sold in more than 60 countries and in many of Spain's top restaurants.

She took lessons from Coca-Cola: for a bottled product, restaurants matter as much as supermarkets. Early on, she says, producers entered restaurants through the suppliers' door and pitched door to door. The first restaurant to back them was Santceloni, with chef Óscar Velasco.

Before all this she was a "good eater, but didn't cook". Hence the classes, to understand where and how each oil is used. The result was a range of "gastronomic oils": versions for cocktails, spicy, smoked, amontillado-aged, more fruity, biodynamic and single-variety.

What's next?

At 63, Vañó is ready to hand over the reins gradually. "You have to know how to step back too. It's part of life," she says. Her son and her nephew are already on the team, and she trusts them to make decisions, and mistakes.

Looking back, she says the music years taught her to handle outlandish artist requests and to stay close to the media. Above all, she was lucky to be fascinated by everything she did.