The Olive Mill: The Oil

I use olive oil a lot but a lot. For me it's a happy marriage between something I like to eat that is actually beneficial to my health which isn't always the case, believe me.
Here it is, a thin stream of liquid gold flowing into a blue plastic bucket; I would have liked something a little more reverential but in this part of the world this is just an everyday product. One of the ladies who comes to my English class told me that she'd spent the last few weeks picking more than a thousand kilos of olives from her 75 trees....imagine!

Moulin de la Brague: Making Olive Oil

Now here's the inside of the olive mill which I had hoped would be more romantic looking but that's progress for you. The mill is now semi automated and though each piece of machinery was carefully labelled visitors weren't allowed in to read them so all I can tell you is that the olives are fed in somewhere out of the picture on the left and move round the machinery till the oil comes out somewhere on the right. I can tell you though that it was sparkling clean, extremely noisy and smelt strongly of crushed olives.
Being a resourceful type I've copied and pasted this account of the actual process from an excellent website which advises on setting up your own olive farm. Here's the link if you're interested in taking it up..

1. The Mill grinds or hammers the olives and pits into paste which is extruded onto the plates which go onto the press. Don't let heat build up during the milling or pressing or the flavor will be affected.
2. Malaxation is a slow mixing of the paste which allows the oil - water emulsion to coalesce. Small microscopic oil droplets join together into large drops which will come out during centrifugation or separation.
   
3. The Press is usually centrifugal in larger machines. The press separates out the olive juice and oil and leaves behind a fibrous "pomace". Toss the pomace or sell it to someone who wants to chemically remove more of the oil for industrial uses such as soapmaking. From each ton of fruit anywhere from 12 to 50 gallons of oil can be produced.
   
4. Separate the oil from the water using a decanter or centrifugal separator.
5. Bottle the oil, keeping it away from heat and light. .
6. Invite your friends to taste your oil.
   
7. Sell some of your oil at the local farmer's market or grocery store to pay for the land, trees, consulting, mill, etc.
8. The public finds you, clamoring for more -
   
9. Let us know when you're in business so we can put you on the internet.
10. See; now wasn't that easy?

And here's the account in French:
La fabrication de l'huile s'effectue de la mi-novembre à la fin mars au fur et à mesure de la récolte. Le principe de fabrication étant le suivant: - Lavage des olives; - Broyage des olives par meules en pierre ou par broyeur mécanique; - Malaxage de la pâte obtenue; - Pressage ou centrifugation de la pâte pour obtenir le jus de l'olive, ce jus étant composé d'huile et d'eau végétale; - Centrifugation du jus pour séparer l'huile de l'eau végétale; l'huile ainsi obtenue aura l'appellation d'huile d'olive vierge première pression. My thanks to Frederic for that..

Tomorrow we'll have a look at the oil..

Moulin de la Brague: the Olive Harvest.

The next few posts I'm going to dedicate to the open day at our local olive mill last Saturday so an interest in olives is going to be obligatory till Thursday at least!

This is the Moulin A Huile Michel also known as the Moulin de la Brague and is one of the very few working olive mills in the area which means that any one can harvest their olives from even one tree and take them down to the mill where they'll be turned into olive oil almost under your eyes. "Almost" because the production has been semi automated so the machinery is closed in.
A mill has existed on this site since the fifteenth century but passed into the hands of the Michel family in 1848. It was Roger Michel who dynamised the business in the 1960s and it continues to thrive especially in a time which recognises the benefits of olive oil.
The mill operates during the olive harvest which takes place from November to March. This year has been exceptional and the olives are flooding in. The mill also has a pleasant boutique selling local products and their own olive oil and olives. You can also buy products made elsewhere. The shop is on most tour operaters' itineraries where tourists can stock up on local gifts to take home with them..I buy my olives from them and really good olive oil to give away as presents.

It was such a dreadful day weather wise that I decided to put the photo in black and white, it was almost monochrome anyway.

Olives

Left to my own devices this post would run and run as I absolutely love olives....
I love the sight of the olive groves on south facing hillsides, the leaves changing colour in the breeze. I love the astringent taste of those small black olives on my tongue especially with a glass of red wine and if you've never taken a horizontal slice of baguette, rubbed it with a half of a cut clove of garlic with a little olive oil drizzled over it then you've never lived.
It pleases me to see the olive nets spread over the ground under the trees to collect the fruit. I like to know that some things still have to be done by hand, even though it's back breaking work and there's satisfaction in knowing that what you pick can be turned into your own olive oil at the mill down the road. Even if you've only got 2 or 3 trees your olives can be mixed in with someone elses.
This year's olive harvest is exceptional Nice Matin tells me and next weekend the olive mill in our village is giving guided tours so I shall be there with my camera...