The Olive - Production and Pressing

Autumn has come and with it the garden chores vary. It was time for us to pick our olives. There is a saying that you shouldn’t count your chickens before they hatch and it’s one that is relevant for many of us in our area. We were delighted to see our trees heavy with flower early on in the season. But for some reason – be it wind, rain, hail  - they dropped off and our eventual harvests were poor. 

              

                                                    

A word about the olive, one of the most valuable harvests of the Mediterranean region. In that area, wild olives are believed to have been collected by Neolithic man in the 8^th millennium BC. Archaeologists have found evidence that the Canaanites were producing oil by 4,500 BC, while recorded evidence of oil extraction is found in the Hebrew Bible, when the Egyptian exodus is described.

As far as Greece is concerned, the olive tree was being cultivated around 1500 BC in Crete (late Minoan period). The earliest evidence of oil production is of amphorae, or jars, used for storage.  The olive was held in high esteem by the Greeks. Many writers - among them, Herodotus, Plutarch and Ovid - relate how the capital city was named in honour of the goddess, Athena, whose gift to the city of the  olive tree was held in preference to that of Poseidon, a spring of salt water.

                                 

                           

Its value as a trading commodity cannot be underestimated for many cultures saw it as essential. The oil was used in religious rituals, as medicine, as fuel for lamps, in the making of soap and items of skin-care. We are all familiar with those six-pack Spartans, generously glazed in olive oil while participating in their competitive sports – now there’s a thought for modern-day marketing!                                                                                                                     

 

                                                                                                                                                     

I love watching the olives ripen. These pictures above you can see how they develop from a firm light green, to a partial green/black where they seem to have been dipped in chocolate ,  through a cloud, dark hue, and finally to a lush, rich, shining berry, ready to be harvested. That last phase is definitely my favourite!

Nowadays Greece holds third place (after Spain and Italy) as a major producer of olive oil in the world.  How the olive oil was processed will determine how it is classified.   The classifications are :

·         Extra-virgin olive oil: this is produced by mechanical means only, i.e. without the use of chemicals. This is of higher quality and contains no more than 0.8% free acidity - i.e. of not more than 0.8 gr of oleic acid per 100 grams.

·          Virgin olive oil: this, too, is produced by mechanical means only, but, having a free acidity of up to 1.5%, is of a slightly lower quality.

·         Refined olive oil: this is produced and by refined  by using charcoal and other chemical and physical filters; it has a free acidity of not  more than 1.3%. Oils labeled as Pure olive oil and Olive oil are refined oil with a small amount of virgin oil added for flavor.

·         Olive pomace oil: this is refined oil extracted from the pomace, the solids remaining after the virgin oil production. With less of a flavor, but a high smoke point, it is widely used for cooking in restaurants.

There are many different types of olive, many of them particularly suited to specific climatic conditions. It can be a sensitive crop so variety, location, maturity, milling method and storage mode will all play a part in the eventual quality of the oil. Master olive oil tasters identify three main positive attributes in oil flavour:

·         fruity  : this describes the spicy flavour of ripe fruit; the black olive yielding oil that is milder, aromatic, buttery, floral; while the green olive produces flavours of a more green, grassy, herbaceous type.                                  

·         bitter : this refers to a more acrid taste that is mostly pleasant.

·         pungent : this leaves a peppery sense in the mouth .

Just as masters of wine do, they can detect delicate nuances of banana and artichoke on their sophisticated palates, but if they come up with epithets of bacon or cucumber about your oil – that is not good. It is likely to indicate oxidization in the former and overlong storage, possibly in tin, in the case of the latter.

I hope that background information has been as interesting for you as collecting and selecting it has been for me. Next trip to the supermarket will see me scrutinizing olive oil labels. Not that it will be for our consumption, though – we are lucky enough to produce oil to meet our needs in general.

And so it’s time for me to take you, along with our produce, on a trip to the olive press. Below you see our local press and the vehicles of local producers who arrive with vans and trailers heaped with crates of olives. The first time we went there the conversation went something like this: 

 On our depositing several supermarket bags at his feet:

 ‘We’ve brought our olives and we’d like you to take a look at them – are they all right?’

 Response after inspection:

 ‘Yes, as a sample these are fine. Bring out the rest’

  Embarrassed answer:

‘No, that’s all we have’

 Ensuing loud and extended laughter from all present!!

 

 

                  

Below you see our modest contribution- two crates and one supermarket bag sedately sitting in the back of our 4x4. Because there had been heavy rain, so higher water content, the ratio of oil to berry which the press was offering was 10: 1, that is, for every 10 kilos of olives you only got 1 litre of oil. This year, because of low volume and ratio,  our yield was a meagre 3.5 litres, but our very own extra-virgin.

 The complex houses two processing units, so firstly our olives are loaded onto a conveyor belt which has grooves within which the olives nestle as they are taken in for the first part of the process- the wash.

 

                                

Now you see the olives drop from the conveyor belt to be washed – when you see the muddy run-off and soggy leaves filtered to the side, you see how necessary that wash is!

                 

Now the olives are milled and reduced to a paste. What you see happening below is that the paste is now being malaxed – great word that sounds like a real threat as in : Do that once more and I’ll malax you!  It also sounds gloriously similar to a very rude Greek word which makes it wonderfully bivalent! What this means is that the paste is mixed or churned so that the tiny oil droplets can cluster together or agglomerate. My, how my vocabulary has been enriched while I’ve been researching this topic!  

 

After this, the oil literally goes to press. Well, our press does use a press, but more modern units will use centrifugal force for the separation process. At any rate at this point three materials are produced: the solid pomace  (as mentioned   in the oil classification above), a watery liquid which is drained off, leaving our extra-virgin olive oil seen below.

 

 

 If crude oil is known as black gold or Texas tea, then our olive oil can be dubbed liquid gold or even green-gold tea – it’s equally healthy with its anti oxidants battling those baddies, the free radicals, in our systems.

We talked about Greece being third in terms of olive oil world production, but it is noteworthy  that 80% of her production is of the extra-virgin category, in comparison to Italy’s 65% and Spain’s 30%. Clearly she goes for quality rather than quantity. Relevant, too, is that this year at New York’s annual International Olive Oil Competition, 19 Greek oils were named among the world’s best : 11 gained the Gold Award status  and 8 were  given the Silver Award status.

Go Greece!