In Italy, the olive harvest season is upon us. Starting in late October and lasting six weeks, olives are picked and cultivated in preparation for olive pressing.
The olive oil that you enjoy in salads, roasting, baking and your favorite Olivella products all starts here.
The Virgin Olive Oil, that provides the base of the entire Olivella line, is from the Umbrian region of Italy. Like grapes, olives are delicate and therefore the quality of the oil decreases if the olives are picked by electric tools. The gentler the olives are treated in the picking process, the better the resulting oil. This new olive oil “Olio Nuovo” is the freshest because it comes from the very first pressing.
Therefore, in the Olivella groves the olives are picked by hand with a net, referred to in Italian as a mano con telo. This is the best method, with 50% more production resulting than when just a basket is used versus a net.
Typically one to three people work on a tree. The first step is to lay down the net, which is slit in the middle to ensure it secures the base of the tree, to catch every single olive. One person begins on the upper branches, while the others work on the lower ones. The olives are cultivated by the use of hands, sliding the olives gently down the branch, allowing them to drop naturally onto the net below. Both the green and the black olives are harvested because a mix of the two makes for the highest quality olive oil.
These olives are transported to our olive mill or frantoio, as it is called in Italian. There the olives go through a few steps, all done mechanically:
- washing
- grinding
- mixing
- pressing
- separation
- stocking
First the olives are washed, eliminating all the stray leaves and stems.
The second step is the grinding, when the olives including their pits, are crushed into an olive paste.
Next there is mixing, a crucial phase that must be done slowly and uniformly.
Next is the pressing, where the juices are separated into three parts: oil, vegetable water and pomace (the solid remains of olives after pressing) which are ejected into the outer part of the decanter.
There is a further centrifugal process of separation in which the heavier water is removed from the oil.
Finally, the “Olio Nuovo” (extra virgin olive oil) pours out of a tube that drains into a steel container where it will be stocked in a cool place before bottling.
Let the picking begin!
