Olio&Olive, Extra Virgin Olive Oil As You Never Tasted Before!

From Olives to Olive Oil

The most important operation in olives growing, because of the
repercussions it has on the quantity and quality of the oil, is the harvest.

Harvesting the olives for the new season’s oil is a delicate operation. To ensure
quality, both timing and methods are of fundamental importance. Olives usually
mature in late fall. The best time to harvest them is as they are just turning
from green to black when they contain the most oil of the best quality.

However, the olives don’t all mature at the same time, even on the same tree.
Therefore, in order to render the harvest operation economically advantageous
farmers need to chose the time when the largest possible number of olives are
mature. Only fresh olives still attached to the tree can be made into high quality
oil, so they must be detached from the plant not picked up from the ground.

Several are the harvesting techniques and they depend on the type of the tree
and the lie of the land. The simplest technique is the "brucatura". It involves the
picking of ripe olives only and must be repeated several times during the fall
and winter. The "pettinatura" method involves the use of a special hand-held
rake. This is limited to small olive tree where the top branches are still within
arm’s reach. Taller trees are harvested using the "bacchiatura" method which
involves beating the branches with poles and catching the olives on sheets of
canvas spread on the ground under the tree.

Opinions vary about whether hand picked olives are of higher quality than
those harvested mechanically. The high cost of manual harvesting (about 50
percent of the production cost) has brought to the switching to mechanical
harvesting when possible.

Newly harvested olives are washed, deleafed and crushed preferably by huge
granite stones, into paste made up of the olive pulp and pits. The paste in then
spread on hemp or nylon mats that fit on the steel disks stacked one atop of
the other. Then the disks are wheeled over on a cart to a hydraulic press where
extreme pressure is exerted upon them to squeeze out the liquid, which drips
from the edges of the disks.

The mats allow the oil to drain and at the same time filter out the solid olive
matter. The liquid is collected and pumped into a separator, which whisks off
the water by centrifugal force and leaves a steady trickle of oil pouring out of its
spout.

The product obtained from this process is classified as Virgin olive oil. It means
that is obtained solely by mechanical means under conditions, particularly
thermal conditions, that do not lead to deterioration of the oil. It has not
undergone any treatment, other than washing, crushing, preparation of the
paste, separation of the solid and liquid phases, settling and/or centrifugation,
and filtration. Virgin olive oil is therefore the oily juice of a fruit: the olive. It is
virtually the only oil that can be consumed as it is obtained from the fruit, and
when properly processed maintains unchanged the flavor, aroma, and vitamins
that the oil had when in the olive.

WARNING:

Unscrupulous producers can sell oil as "extra virgin" as long as
they meets acidity standards and satisfies chemical analysis
standards without informing consumers that some of the oil is
chemically rectified or that it has been blended. Frauds include
blending olive oil with nut or seed oils, as well as blending
rectified oil with extra virgin olive oil.

Obviously, such oil will not have the health benefits of a true
extra virgin olive oil!

For this reason we have decided to work side by side with some of the best
and most reliable producers in different italian regions to have every year not
just wonderful flavors but also genuine products.

As described in our guide Grading and Tasting Olive Oil we can easily discover a
real extra virgin olive oil simply using a well trained smell and palate.

We have been teaching the system to the professionals and now they are
using the same products you can find here