The Olive Factory

Given the personal experience of picking olives from an olive tree in an olive orchard last weekend, I was excited to see what happens to the olives once they're picked.  How does it become olive oil?  Today was my opportunity to find out!

After we left Tuscania, we drove another 30 minutes to a town called Canino, which literally means "Little Dog" in Italian.  Who knew that THE best olive oil of the region came from a town called "Little Dog"?

What I didn't know beforehand was that we wouldn't go directly to the factory.  Instead, the bus driver pulled over on the side of the road, in the middle of an olive orchard as far as the eye could see in all directions.  There three men greeted and directed us several hundred yards into the orchard where a tracker sat.  Attached to the tractor was a mechanical arm and on the end of the arm was a huge comb, that when turned on vibrated back and forth.  The comb is how the men harvested the olive trees.  The comb harvested an entire tree in a matter of just a few minutes, whereas it took several of us last week about 45 minutes to an hour to harvest one tree.  Boy, we could have used one of these things last weekend!

The whole gang at the olive
orchard in Canino

While it was amazing to see the men manipulate, in almost artist-like fashion, this mechanical comb they were gratious enough to allow several of our kids try their hand at it!  It'll be an experience they will never forget.  Here's one of my advisees, Akbar (left), taking his turn.

After thanking them for their hospitality, we loaded the kids back on the bus and headed to the olive oil factory.  Our guide, Paolino (see right with Ale, Italian teacher), was also one of the men that lead us out to the olive orchard.  At left is where the process begins.  The olives get dumbed into a vat that separates the leaves and tree branches from the olives.  The olives then go up the conveyor belt, leading them into the factory itself.

The olives go through another vat that does a second round of separating from any remaining leaves.  The olives go up another conveyor belt (see left) that sends takes them through the preliminary process of becoming olive oil: weighing, cleaning, milling, and pitting.  Afterwards, the liquid inside the olive is extracted in blue and white tanks (left).  Once the liquid is extracted, then there's a separation process the liquid goes through that causes it to become its final product, olive oil.

The olive oil then get sent to these huge tanks (right) where the oil gets weighed and goes through a "curring" process.  Once the oil is "cured" it's ready for production, or to be bottled.  The oil is packaged three different ways: tiny (for the airline industry), small/medium/large (for the general public), and extra large (for commercial use).  They had a small store on site, so I was able to stock up on the best olive oil in Lazio at wholesale prices!  The picture below-right are boxes of the large olive oil bottles that will be sent to grocery and mom/pop stores around the region for purchase by the public.  Below-left is the assembly line for mass production of olive oil for commercial use.  You can see the olive oil in the cylindrical tanks being cyphoned into the large cans being put on the conveyor belt by one of the technicians.

All of this olive oil production made us all wanting some.  Fortunately, adjacent to the factory was a "Bruschetta Roo
m," where we could go, have a crostini with a dash of salt and some very tasty, hot-off-the-press olive oil.  So good!  Below are four SYA-ers getting their hands on a fresh batch of bruschetta (from left: Emily, Reggie (one of my advisees), Rebekha, and Jacqui (another advise of mine).