“ Olive Oil Extraction ”
The first time I saw how the olive oil was made was in this old house, with such beautiful antique tools, that it was a pleasure to stay there, like the time just stops for a few hours. The owners of the house where kind enough to organize a festival to share this antique process of extracting olive oil, in which people gathered together dressed in traditional clothes, some of them making different handcrafted objects and others gathered together for the folkloric dance.
The process started with gathering olives, after that a horse was brought inside the house and tied to the millstone. While the horse is moving the millstone, the olives are pressed forming a thick paste of purple color. This paste comes deposited in some sort of baskets, made of esparto grass straw called "soffins", which act like drains, leaking fluids and retaining the solids. After these "coffins" are filled with the pasta obtained, these are stacked one above another in a path, under the olive oil press.
The olive oil press is built of a large piece of wood that weighs several tons, and dates from 1882.
Next to the coffins are the "heaven" and the "hell" two small compartments that are connected, above the ground, by a tank full of cold water. While the olive oil press, presses the "coffins", the first drops of olive oil smoothly makes it's presence by the sparkling particles that comes out from the edges of the "coffins".
The olive oil leaks, by a small tube, into so called "heaven" floating above the water, which by it's density pushes out the water and the remains of the pasta into the "hell"where the water and the remains of the pasta drains by a small tube outside the house.
The entire process takes up to 6-7 hours. Later on in the next day the virgin olive oil can be collected from the "heaven".
Sadly this system fades away day by day.
The first time I saw how the olive oil was made was in this old house, with such beautiful antique tools, that it was a pleasure to stay there, like the time just stops for a few hours. The owners of the house where kind enough to organize a festival to share this antique process of extracting olive oil, in which people gathered together dressed in traditional clothes, some of them making different handcrafted objects and others gathered together for the folkloric dance.
The process started with gathering olives, after that a horse was brought inside the house and tied to the millstone. While the horse is moving the millstone, the olives are pressed forming a thick paste of purple color. This paste comes deposited in some sort of baskets, made of esparto grass straw called "soffins", which act like drains, leaking fluids and retaining the solids. After these "coffins" are filled with the pasta obtained, these are stacked one above another in a path, under the olive oil press.
The olive oil press is built of a large piece of wood that weighs several tons, and dates from 1882.
Next to the coffins are the "heaven" and the "hell" two small compartments that are connected, above the ground, by a tank full of cold water. While the olive oil press, presses the "coffins", the first drops of olive oil smoothly makes it's presence by the sparkling particles that comes out from the edges of the "coffins".
The olive oil leaks, by a small tube, into so called "heaven" floating above the water, which by it's density pushes out the water and the remains of the pasta into the "hell"where the water and the remains of the pasta drains by a small tube outside the house.
The entire process takes up to 6-7 hours. Later on in the next day the virgin olive oil can be collected from the "heaven".
Sadly this system fades away day by day.
