Olive Milling

Max here...

Here's a follow up to the post about our first olive harvest.  24 hours later, I was at the mill in Santa Ynez watching our olives get pressed.  We started picking at 9:30 on Sunday, and at 9:30 the next morning the olives were milled.  That means the longest ANY olive sat in that harvest bin was 24 hours, and most of them less!  We've been learning that minimizing the time from harvest to mill is one of the most important factors in making a high quality oil.

To quote one of our customers who tried the oil for the first time this morning:

"WOW, your olive oil is amazing!  I was in Italy a few weeks ago enjoying some delicious oils and yours is up there with the best.  Really !"

Below are some pictures and a short video from the mill.  The process was fascinating start to finish.  After being washed, the olives are ground into a paste and turned over and over in the "malaxer," for about 30-45 minutes.  Malaxing the paste help separate the oil from the pulp.  From there, the pulp is sent into centrifuge, and spun at a very high rate to separate the oil from the pulp.  At the end of the chute, out comes freshly cold pressed extra virgin olive oil!