Extra Virgin Olive Oil – modern vs traditional techniques

The first time I saw olives being pressed at a frantoio in Tuscany, it was a romantic affair straight out of the middle ages.

The large stone wheel, turned by a donkey, crushed the olives into a fine paste.  The puree of olive was poured onto thick woven straw mats that were then stacked on top of one another and put into a press.  As pressure was applied to the stack of mats, you could see the water and oil running out into the pan at the bottom. The liquid was centrifuged to separate the oil and everyone gathered around the fire, using freshly toasted bruschetta to taste the brand new oil.  It was the freshest thing I’d ever tasted.

My next visit to the olive press, many years later, was a bit of a modern industrial shock.  Instead of the stone wheel and donkey, there was a large closed metal machinery that was macerating the olives, rather than pressing them into a pulp.  There were two centrifuges, one a large cylinder, the other smaller and attached to where the oil poured into the stainless steel pan.

You never saw the puree or the process;  you just heard the loud machinery.  The puree was centrifuged twice in another closed metal unit, and finally the oil exited at the end of the line, as beautiful a green liquid gold as I’d ever seen and smelling heavenly.

Using modern, high tech machinery is the current method for pressing and extracting oil from olives in Tuscany and southern Italy.  There are hundreds of large and small olive presses all over Tuscany.  Because the equipment is expensive and because the season is so short, lasting just two months in November and December, most press owners do something else during the year.   My favorite mill, Pesavento, is an autobody shop the rest of the time!

The ancient techniques for pressing the olives and removing the oil was beautiful to see.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t make very good oil.  The straw mats were impossible to thoroughly clean and often caused the oil to go rancid quickly.  Modern methods are much less romantic, not beautiful to look and and extremely noisy.  But the quality of the oil is so much better that it’s given the entire industry a boost.