At the Frantoio

Yesterday was the big day as we delivered our first olives to the frantoio. We thought the minimum weight processed was 100 kg and we were desperately trying to make up that weight in the last few days before our appointment at the frantoio, the olive mill. We did want to get them to the mill though, as the first ones picked were starting to deteriorate quite rapidly. However, the weather wasn't on our side, plus the weather forecast got it wrong by 12 hours. Sunday from about midday it was supposed to rain and clear up by Monday late morning. So we took Sunday off, to re-double our efforts for Monday to Wednesday. As it happened, Sunday stayed largely dry, with the rains and storms arriving Sunday night and lasting until Tuesday noon. So 2 1/2 days were lost. Also the trees on the lower terraces are in such a bad state, that they barely bear any fruit anyway, giving us a lot of work pruning them back with very little return in the way of olives (plenty of fire wood mind).

Cut a long story short, we only gathered 83kg of olives and it turned out that the minimum weight for one run is 150kg anyway. There's no way we would've been able to make that. You then have a choice of either just have your piddling quantity pressed and pay for the minimum quantity, or you can buy some of their olives to make up the quantity. We opted for the first option, to see what the oil would taste like (also we couldn't afford to buy their olives just now...). Our friend Karen came along to the frantoio and documented it all on photo, so here we go:

Delivering the olives:

and some more

and more

I was quite meticulous picking out only the healthiest looking olives. Just before we left home I picked out a few kilos which looked decidedly manky. But having now seen some olives which other growers brought along, ours looked positively good.

Our olives going into the washing machine:

Then into the press in individual batches. Unfortunately this is not one of the traditional stone mills, which would have all looked much more picturesque, but these are becoming rarer these days.


After an hours or so of waiting and inhaling the heady fumes of fresh olive oil, and chatting to other olive farmers...



...finally the first stream of bright green oil!



...and the first taste off my finger... mmh, not bad. Rich and fruity with a distinctly spicy finish. Definitely more Tuscan in style then Ligurian (the olive grove in Popetto are just on the Tuscan side of the border, whilst we are in Liguria, which is more famous for lighter more delicate styles of oil).


A word of advice from the frantoista: "not bad, but next time bring your olives in within 48 hours of picking them." Some of you may remember that I said fresh olives are no good to eat. However, if you want to turn them to oil, you should use them as fresh as possible and the oil is immediately consumable. I'd have brought them in sooner, I explained to the miller, but I had to cut overgrown trees to size at the same time, got interupted by bad wether AND an arm operation. In future years we hope to have both better yields as well as making harvesting them easier.

Squeezing the last drops out..


And finally the end product: about 16 litres of oil!

It won't last us for the whole coming year and the quality may not be outstanding, but it's way better than any commercial supermarket oils and it's made from our own blood, sweat and tears! (Well tears maybe an exageration, but blood and sweat definitely flowed!)