Although, my plans were different for today’s post, I bring up the post on the oil mill as it completes my last posts regarding the olive trees.
A simple sign beside the road offered a sightseeing of an oil mill. We stopped our car and accepted. Outside the building in modern industry style, were old mills set up.
In the pre-industry times, the olives were grinded by big round millstones pulled by donkeys. Then the mash came in the next stage. Here it was pressed, to get the oil out of the mash. In the early 20th century a steam machine overtook the donkeys job as well as the mens job at the press.
Today, we have a washing machine first, were the farmers throw in their olives. Next, they are milled and centrifuged by different machines to be filtered before bottling the native oil. The machines are cooled to keep the oil from getting to warm. That’s because the oil looses quality when getting to warm during the production process.The remaining parts from the pit shells are pressed into pellets to be sold for pellet heatings.
At this point, we were shown a documentary to learn, how the olives are collected at harvest time and how the machines produce the oil. Harvest time is in winter, and during summer there is no work to be done in the mill. So, they produced a little documentary for the visitors showing all processes in action. What a great idea.
Before we left the building, we have had to pass a table with some oil cans and were allowed (had to) taste the oil: 2 different pure oils and an oil spiced up with garlic. The idea here: get the tourists to buy some cans 🙂 I expected this. The price was OK, so I bought a can. I like cooking with olive oil, so the can is already empty. What a pity. It tasted way better than the oil available in the grocery stores around.
Stay tuned!
MyBlog - solaner 