A Grand Day Out

Today I have been to see Gordon and Lyndsey’s olives being turned into oil.

We travelled to Navares, to a tiny ‘factory’ in the middle of the town, not much bigger than a double garage! The olives and their baskets were weighed and then the olives tipped into a hopper. (The weight of the empty baskets was then deducted – and they had collected 399.9 kg – Oh for a handful more!)

The olives went up a conveyor belt, and were fed into a stone table, with 3 conical wheels / grindstones rotating over them. Everything was crushed together; skins, fruit, stones, until it was a fine pulp. The pulp was pushed down a channel, into a cast iron vessel. Once the pulping was completed, the resulting ‘porridge’ was made ready for the press. To do this, the pulp was layered in special baskets, a bit like up-turned berets. I lost count, but Gordon mentioned 40 at one point.

Once they were all stacked up, the previous stack was removed, and theirs put into place, in the press. This was a lovely old cast iron press, with a hydraulic ram. In fact, the very weight of the pulp on it’s own resulted in liquid being released before it even went into the press. (Although this was a mixture of oil and water – not just oil.) We were advised that it would take about 3 hours to process, so off we went for lunch…

When we returned, the lady was in the process of pouring the oil into the containers, ready to be taken home. They collected about 65 litres of oil, from this first ‘Extra Virgin’ press. The oil is cloudy to start with, but can be used straight away. If left for a few weeks, it starts to clear, and can then be filtered if necessary.

It was wonderful to see such a small ‘cottage industry’ in full flow. People coming and going, bringing olives and taking oil. There are 3 options; a) take olives and get paid for them, b) take olives for pressing, pay for pressing and keep all of the oil, c) take olives and swap for oil (But you get less oil than in option b.)