Spannocchia Olive Oil - from Tree to Bottle
Photo credits in italic.
Early on a November morning, the olives are too wet to pick, but they will be dried by the sun and picking begins around 10:00 a.m.
Madeline Yale
Mesh nets are set up on the ground around each large tree to catch the olives as they are picked – in Italian these nets are called “parachutes” because farmers used abandoned silk parachutes as nets after World War II.
Paul Avis
INTERNS PICKING OLIVES
During olive harvest time, it’s all hands on deck (or rather, in the orchard) to help pick the olives by hand. Interns, farm staff, volunteers, residents, even visiting Board members help out. The more the merrier, and the faster the olives are picked, the faster they’ll get to the frantoio, or press, in prime condition. The whole picking process usually takes 2-3 weeks. Things to remember while picking:
- Be careful where you step – squished olives are no good before you get to the frantoio!
- Keep your balance when picking in the trees – the branches are fragile, and it’s tempting to reach out too far to get that last branch.
- The process of stripping the olives from the branches is somewhat like milking a cow – just a bit more prickly.
Gail Cinelli
Richard Olken
Paul Avis
After each tree is picked clean of olives, the fruit is loaded from the nets into crates called cassette, and then the cassette are stored in a cool dry place until it’s time to go to the frantoio. It’s easy to carry the crates when you make a train of pickers – this is why it’s nice to have as many people as possible to help with the olive harvest! Paul Avis
Gail Cinelli
Off to the frantoio! The press that we go to uses a modern process, and only presses organic olives. While it’s fun to watch the traditional process with stone grinding wheels and pressing mats at an older frantoio, it’s hard to ensure that your olive mash won’t get mixed with leftover material from previous, non-organic pressings.When we arrive with our olives – the first thing we do is unload all the cassette from the van and transfer the olives to the large frantoio crates. The crates are then taken into the frantoio by forklift to begin the pressing.
Gail Cinelli
The crate is emptied into a bin that loads the olives into the pressing machine. The olives are washed and the leaves separated out, and then the fruit is ground and pressed, pits and all.
Gail Cinelli
Beginning with just a drip, which grows into a steady stream, the fluorescent green olive oil begins to flow out of the press and into the waiting containers. Olive oil starts out bright green and almost opaque and then mellows to a transparent gold as it ages throughout the year. The taste also mellows, evolving from a bright, spicy, and very green and leafy flavor to a nutty and smooth, but still somewhat spicy flavor.
Gail Cinelli
The next step is weighing the full containers to see how much oil the olives produced. Most years we get about 12 – 15% - that is, for 500kg of our olives produces 60 – 75 liters of oil. In 2004, we got over 700 liters of oil – from about 4500kg of olives. That’s the most we’ve ever had, and definitely explains why we were still picking olives in December! The remaining mush of olive skins and ground up pits is collected by the frantoio and sold to other presses to make lower grades of oil, or is used for fertilizer.
Gail Cinelli
Now comes the fun part – the first taste of new oil! Some frantoio tasting rooms have a small fireplace so you can toast your bread to make a nice bruschetta, but in a pinch, a slice of bread rubbed with a clove of garlic, smothered with fresh oil, and eaten in the frantoio parking lot will do.
Here is a shopping list for your next frantoio trip: Bread, Fresh garlic, Salt and pepper, Red Wine, Clementines, Pears Pecorino Cheese, Water, A knife to cut the bread (often forgotten, which leads to very rough and lumpy bruschetta!)
Buon Appetito!
Gail Cinelli