Process

The olive trees of our company are subject to scrupulous attention throughout the year, from pruning and fertilizing during the winter, the spring bloom, the growth of the fruit until harvest from October to December. Despite the constant criticality, the end of the year, characterized by the olives harvest, the milling, the settling and decanting, is the crucial moment for the construction of a very high quality oil.

The olives harvest

The manual harvest is called stripping, it is also called combing when the operation is facilitated by simple tools such as rakes or combs that allow an increase in labour productivity by 12-20%. In the manual harvest, workers climb up the trees with the stairs and, using their fingers or particular combs, make the olives fall on networks previously placed under the tree. Once the olives have been detached from the tree are collected and placed in bags or boxes. The manual harvest is the system that ensures the best quality olives.

The milling

The olives are pressed within 24 hours from their harvest. The phases that characterize the milling are:

• Preparing the dough

The first stage involves the removal of the leaves through a special machine called defoliator, the olives are then fed into a machine for cleaning from the dirt and sand (not with water but with the use of a sieve). Then the milling (grinding) of the olives starts. This is done through the muller who shall crush and grind the olives so that they get the dough. This is done without heating the paste to avoid any change of organoleptic quality.

• Kneading

The dough obtained by the use of the muller is gross. It is subjected to a slow mixing in the kneading machines that determines the breaking of the emulsion oil-water formed during the pressing in order to aggregate the particles of oil between them.

• Extracting the oil from the oil-must

After the kneading the oil is extracted by cold. The olive paste passes from the kneading cylinder to the horizontal centrifuge that operates the separation of the oily paste in its three components (water, oil and residue). In continuous systems, characterized by both two and three phases, the separation of components for different density is produced by the centrifugal force generated by the rotation speed of the centrifuge. Thanks to the presence of the temperature probe, we can control that during the manufacturing process the limit of 27 ° C, allowed by the law, is not exceeded.

The oil is analyzed by an accredited external laboratory.

Settling and decanting

The oil obtained with the cold system, is usually settled in order to allow all the particles contained in suspension to settle to the bottom and then obtain a clear oil. Only after settling the oil is decanted. The continuous system can also be combined with the oil filter in order to make it immediately clear, but in this case it can lose substances that determine the organoleptic characteristics, especially polyphenols.