Olive Oil Week!

Just finished up olive oil week yesterday, where we worked at a farm picking olives for a few days and learned all about the process of making extra virgin olive oil.  We visited a farm called Pruneti, just outside Florence in a town called San Polo.  In contrast to our week of picking grapes for wine, this week at the farm was much better.  Picking olives is much easier work than picking grapes, there really isn't that much to it other than knocking the olives off the tree into a net.  We all worked on the same two or three trees too, so we could very easily see each other and communicate.  At the vineyard, we only saw one or two people at a time and we were separated by the rows of grapes.  We also learned more about the process of making the oil because all of us actively participated in the process.  Each day, three of us stayed inside to work the machinery that produces the oil.  The process goes like this... first, the olives are dumped into the first machine, which first filters the leaves and sticks out, then sends the olives up a conveyor belt where they are rinsed with water and dumped into the next machine.  This machine presses the olives, which results in a thick purple substance.  This substance is then separated by the next machine into either oil or a thicker purple gunk.  Then the oil is filtered again by the last machine before it is emptied into large containers.  There are no chemicals involved in this process, and as far as I can tell there was no heat involved, although the oil was somewhat warm at the end; probably just a byproduct of being sent through so many machines, but definitely not enough heat to ruin any of the constituents in the oil.  The result was a beautifully olive-green oil, yes olive-green, much more olive-green than any oil I had ever seen.  In addition to pressing their own olives, they also rent the machinery to smaller farmers who don't own the equipment to press their olives.  There were constantly people coming in to press their olives, and it was apparent how much pride everyone took in making their olives into oil.  It's really an ancient process in the Mediterranean region, dating back to at least the Ancient Greeks and possibly even further, and the tradition is still strong here in Italy.  The people who owned the farm, too, took great pride in olive oil.  They only press olives about 40-50 days out of the year, and they keep their machinery available for use 24 hours a day.  There's only two of them, they're brothers, and in order to ensure a quality product, one of them is always there to monitor the process.  They have other employees, but they don't trust anyone else to supervise the process.  And because they need someone there all day and all night, they only get about 3 hours of sleep each day for the duration of olive season.  Yeah, they clearly take pride in their work.  On the last day, we had an olive oil tasting where we tasted four of the olive oils they make, two were from last year and two were from this year.  They explained to us how to taste the oil and what to look for, and it was certainly interesting because I didn't know there was so much to olive oil, but I had a hard time discerning the difference between some of them.  The only very noticeable difference was between the 2009 oils and the 2010 oils.  The newer oils had a stronger flavor, and the color was a deep green, rather than the normal yellowish color.  We were also given the opportunity to purchase some of the fresh 2010 olive oil, and I definitely jumped at the opportunity.  I bought three bottles to take home with me.

In other news, I saw The Social Network this week as well and I thought it was an instant classic, if you haven't seen it go see it, or maybe I'll go see it with you when I get back because it's worth seeing more than once.  Only two weeks of classes left and then we've got finals.  I have a lot of work to do between now and the end of the semester, including two minor presentations, one big presentation on sustainable agriculture, and a research paper on the paleolithic diet.  Paul and Peter were here for a few weeks and they left a few days ago.  It was really nice to spend some time with them and enjoy some great food together.  Oh, speaking of great food, I had quite an experience today for lunch.  The specialty meal here in Florence is called Bistecca Fiorentina, which is essentially a giant T-bone steak, and I finally tried it this morning.  Ohhh boy was it good!  I split a 1.75 kg steak with my roommates, Chris and Matt.  I'll spare you the math on that, it comes out to about 20 oz of steak each.  I honestly didn't think we would finish it but we did.  I had the steak, a small salad, and maybe one piece of bread, that was at about 12:30 this afternoon, it's 7:00 now and I'm still full.  We got plenty of pictures of the beast, I will be sure to upload pictures as soon as I get them from Matt's camera.  That's it for now, Ciao!

 Oil and Waste

The Final Product

Olive Tree

A Morning's Work

2009 on the left, 2010 on the right