Il Frantoio ("The Olive Press")

A little more than a week ago, I told you about La Raccolta ("the harvest") of the olives. It doesn't stop there.

Following the harvest, within usually about three days, the olives go to the press. The olive mills operate round the clock this time of year; so it can be difficult to get an appointment to press your olives.

The process is fascinating.  The olives are dumped from the back of the truck onto a scale that's in the ground and weighed.  The leaves and small branches we didn't separate during the harvest are now separated through the machine and then washed. Next, they are crushed and ground, which forms a brown paste.  The paste is kneaded and heated at a low temperature (think extra virgin, cold pressed) to enable the release of the oils. The air in the mill is thick from the overwhelming aroma of pressed olives. Once the oil is extracted, it goes through a centrifuge, separating the oil and water. From one tube goes the pulp of the olive, the waste of the olive, which is called sansa. The look of the sansa is not appealing!  And out of a spout, pours the foamy olio nuovo ("new oil") in varying shades of green and gold, the fruit of our labor. It is customary to immediately eat bruschetta made with the fresh-pressed oil. (There are several other steps before the extraction that I don't know how to explain -- sorry! -- but this website does.)

I told you firsthand about the intensive manual labor involved. And now I will tell you that for all that hard work the yield is only about 10.5%. From our 118 trees, we yielded ~40 liters of fresh olive oil. Now you understand why your bottle of oil can be so costly.

I enjoy every drop of high quality, good-tasting olive oil more than ever before.

-- Josslyn 'Giosalina'
near Certaldo, Italy

La Raccolta ("The Harvest")

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Ho trovato lavoro in Italia. ("I found work in Italy.")

It is olive season in Toscana, and one can find sagre delle olive ("olive festivals") in most towns and villages.  Tomorrow we will go to Lucca for one such festival.  Olives are one of the oldest fruits known to man, and nowadays the benefits of a diet including and cooking with unsaturated fats are well known.  The fruit and the oil are used worldwide.  I enjoy the fruit cured in various ways as well as the cold-pressed, extra virgin olive oil.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate in the olive harvest.  I joke about coming to Italy to be an immigrant laborer in the vineyards and olive groves.  Harvesting gave me a new appreciation for the process involved before the olive and its oil end up at the table of the end-user.

We took a bus in the morning through the Strada in Chianti to a hilltop town named Panzano.  With each turn in the road, I saw a watercolor waiting to be painted.  We were greeted by the beautiful woman that runs the small winery where we were to work.  Four of us and one five-month old baby made up our team. 

It is a small grove of l’ulivi ("olive trees"), only 118 trees.  We raked the olives off the branches onto the rete ("net") on the ground.  We would then pull out any twigs that came with the olives, and then into the cassetta ("box") the olives would go.  Moving our net to abbraccia ("hug") another cluster of trees, we would repeat the process again and again throughout the day.  The women were chiacchierando ("chitchatting, chattering") all day long while Mirko (the only man amongst us) was praying for silence, I’m sure.  We were treated to lunch at the infamous Antico Macelleria Cecchini where the atmosphere was unique and the food was Slow, healthful, simple, elegant, and delicious.

By the end of the day, I admit to being tired.  We filled seven cassette ("boxes") of olives weighing at least 50 pounds each.  It was not difficult work, only somewhat physical.  To work in the fields in the Chianti hills with gorgeous views in every direction, honestly, is work I felt guilty being paid to do.  A satisfying day in every way.

Next week we return to take the olives to the frantoio ("olive press") to be pressed into oil.

-- Josslyn 'Giosalina'
Panzano in Chianti, Tuscany, Italy