Crushing Olives – Chica Andaluza

Any time from November to early March in Andalucia means it’s time to pick and crush olives. The date for this depends on several factors. The weather for a start, and how it has allowed the olives to grow and mature.

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Some people like to pick their olives very early, when they are still smaller and green. This will give a lower yield of olive oil but of a very high quality. Think of those amazing tasting and expensive olive oils you can find in specialist shops. It’s wonderful for eating “raw” – which means in salads or as a dip – but not suitable really for cooking with. It can be hard to find a mill open to deal with the olives so early on on the season, at least it is where we live.

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There’s also usually a minimum quantity that you can mill (about 250kg) so it’s not really an option to mill some early and then more later on in the season. At the other end of the calendar you have the folk who pick late when the olives are fat and dark. You’ll get a much higher yield of oil but it will have a much less distinctive taste. A good all rounder but with no particularly distinctive flavour. Fine for eating raw, great for cooking. Much of the oil we all buy in supermarkets will be this type. Round here the olives are sold to the co-operatives and everyone benefits from the profit of the sale of the olives and/or oil.

In the middle are people like us. Many who have enough trees to provide them and their families with oil for the year. The olives are picked when they are green/black. You get a good yield of oil with a wonderful flavour which will become more gentle as the year goes on and whatever is left from the year before becomes your oil for cooking.

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Now, I won’t lie to you and say that Big Man and I participate in the picking. Although Big Man has done in the past. Like many others we come to an arrangement with neighbours who don’t have trees or land of their own. We provide the trees and look after them during the year. They pick the olives. We all take them to be milled and then divide the spoils. Perfect!

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This year from our 30 trees (although sometimes when we count we get to 29 or 31, we can’t seem to agree) a fantastic 1732 kg of olives were collected. Last year was not a good year, and next year will probably not be as good as this one. That’s the way it goes with olives, up and down. That means about 60kg of olives from each tree and am almost 19% yield for any of you who love numbers like me! And no sprays or pesticides. Rain water and chicken poo are all our olives get to see them through the year.

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In the past we’ve headed down to the coast to an old mill which cold stone presses the olives. The old boy who runs it is now winding things down, so unless you’re super organised and have made an appointment weeks in advance, it’s not practical now to use his mill. A shame.

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But, nil desperandum. A neighbour’s son and his wife decided 2 years ago to set up a little mill just a few km from us next to our local village. It’s up a very inconvenient wiggly track but the views are amazing! They mostly bought second hand machinery, which I like the thought of, and the very effective little mill serves the locals like us for a few months a year when we want to mill our own olives and enjoy our own oil.

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Yesterday was the big day, and the whole process took about 5 hours (one of which was spent fixing a little breakdown). Ever prepared for such an emergency, we had bought beers, soft drinks and tapas so no one minded waiting. We ended up with an amazing 320 litres of fantastic oil to be split 2 ways. Mostly it gets put into 25 litre containers but you can also buy smaller 5 litre ones. We made sure we filled some smaller ones to load into the car for when we head back to England in a couple of weeks.

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I wish I could share the flavour and the incredible smell with you, but alas the technology doesn’t exist…yet!

What’s my favourite way to use our oil – very simple, the best breakfast in the world (well, apart from a Full English)!

If you’d like to see how we crushed the oil the “old” way, take a look at this post from a few years back.

Yes, after what seems to be a very long wait, we crushed our olives this weekend. It was actually 14 months since we last crushed as we had very little rain in the autumn of 2011 (as opposed to lots in the autumn of 2010) so we left the olives on the trees for as long as possible to let them fatten up. Of course, you lose some, but we like that it acts as fertiliser for the soil in our little olive grove. We´d rather have a few litres less oil but of a higher quality.

So, first you pick by knocking the olives to the ground into the waiting nets. I was excused this backbreaking duty but Big Man asked me to tell you all that it´s hard, hard work on the arms and your back. I do feel sorry for him, his poor muscles are still aching.

Load the olives into trailers and marvel at the variety of beautiful colours.

Now head off to a small local mill where they still stone crush (as opposed to using stainless steel crushers) and cold press (not heating to remove impurities) and don´t filter. We want the pure stuff in our house, and our olives have only been “treated” with rainwater and chicken poo (ok, we won´t dwell too much on that).

Tip them into the hopper.

Then up the ramp they travel and into the blower which removes leaves and twigs. They are weighed after this when “clean”. We had 964kg this year, about 20kg more than last year which surprised us.

Now the fun bit – into the press where they are squashed between the enormous old stones. The smell at this point inside the mill is heady and intoxicating – freshly crushed olives coming at you from all directions. It´s enough to make you sneeze.

Then into a tank for a little rest and finally out and into your waiting containers. This year we got an amazing 235 litres of liquid gold which we split with the couple who help us pick them – 55 litres more than last year and an amazingly high ratio of oil to olives (a yield of about 24% when most people round here are currently getting 18 or 19%). So, it was worth the wait, and a good year for our olives.

Much of it will be consumed at home – we use it for everything in the kitchen. Some will be given away, and some will be carried over for another year when the yield is lower.

Of course, the most important thing, what did it taste like? Amazing! It´s still cloudy and green and tastes peppery and fresh with no acidity. This is how I like it best. Over the next few months the oil will gradually settle and turn a golden colour and take on a softer taste. I´d love to send you all a little sample to dip some fresh crusty bread into, but if you´re ever round these parts, we´ll make sure to give you a taste.