How Olive Oil Is Made

Last night, on our way to dinner we stopped by at an olive oil manufacturer and asked for a tour and a fresh bottle. The owner happily agreed, which is the reaction most italians have when they get a chance to showcase their culture and traditions. Although it was 8:30 p.m.. it's machines, tractors and employees were all buzzing around. In all, the whole operation only took about 12 employees in a room no larger than 900 sq. feet. but they had a steady stream of oil coming out of the spigot. I learned a lot about the liquid gold of Italy while I was there and thought I'd share for all you other fans out there. (We go through practically a bottle a week in our house. Yikes!)

Olives are harvested only about two weeks out of the year so these factories run for 24 hours a day during that time. Around here most landowners have at least 10-20 olive trees on their land so you will see the entire extended family outside harvesting the olives by hand since such the size of their harvest doesn't justify hiring help. I think they mostly use the olive oil for personal use I am told that many true italians never "buy" oil from a store because someone in their inner circle grows and presses their own olives.

Once the olives are harvested - some green, some black depending on where they are on the tree and how much sun they got - they are de-stemmed. The olives, pit and all, are then poured into an ancient looking vat which has 3 giant stone grinders that roll over the olives turning them into a paste which looks similar to tapenade.

Then, this paste gets spread out about an inch thick on a thatch-wooden disk. This process is repeated, one disk on top of another, at the rate of about 10 disks a minute. After there are about 75 disks stacked up, they are moved between two metal disks that are pressurized. Functioning much like an elevator on hydraulics the bottom piece raises out of the ground and squeezes the stack. A watery brown liquid squirts out the sides and drains to a basin on the bottom. Maybe not the best analogy, but it looks like the juices coming out of gyro meat when it is being cut. This squeezing process only takes an hour and a half.

In the olden days (or modern day personal producers) the liquid would then sit for a day to allow the oil to rise to the top and the water (which is the brown part) settle on the bottom. The oil would simply be scooped up and bottled. Now the commercial producers use a really small machine that spins and separates the oil from the water. It then has a faucet that pours out a greenish yellow olive oil. This is the cold pressed, first pressed olive oil. The best of the best.

We bought a litre from the factory for 7Euro and the owner bottled ours right from the spigot. It was almost opaque once bottled; and the color of water after cooking an artichoke, which is to say a little more dingy than algae but indisputably green, not yellow. I am told the color will mellow as the months go on, but surely our bottle will never live to see that day.

So, how does it taste? Well, we cracked open the bottle at the restaurant to give it a try. It was excellent. It was fruity and pungent and creamy. No wonder italians don't bother with salad dressings. Sometimes less really is more.