Category Archives: Olives

Buy our Spanish extra virgin olive oil

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At the moment we have around 300 litres of oil available from this year’s harvest.
It is available in a variety of different containers 1000ml metal cans to 25-litre plastic containers. The litre can is a good size for the kitchen and makes a great gift. At the moment we are in lock down and we are not shipping the oil by post or courier so it is only available if you actually want to pick it up yourself. You can contact us at: oil@cortijoblog.com

 

Click on these links for more information about the OLIVE HARVEST and our OLIVE OIL FAQ.

Cortijo de la Plata extra virgin olive oil

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See this page for more information about our oil and HOW TO BUY IT.

HARVESTING THE OLIVES
Every December we pick our olives at the cortijo and take them to the olive cooperative to be pressed. Olives can be harvested any time between the beginning of December and the end of March and we prefer to pick ours as early as possible to avoid losing the crop to heavy winds or snow.

Large nets are placed on either side of each tree and the olives are knocked down from the higher branches using long, light sticks. The olives on the lower branches are combed off the trees with long-fingered, olive combs. The nets are carefully dragged down from tree to tree and the olives are bagged at the end of each row. It is not necessary to remove all branches and leaves as these removed at the cooperative. We generally take the bags to the cooperative every 3 or 4 days.

Unlike grapes, green and black olives grow on the same tree: the green olive is simply picked earlier in November.

cooperative2PRODUCING THE OIL
There are a large number of oil cooperatives throughout Andalucia, each producing a distinctive oil. When deciding where to take your olives, you will need to taste the oil that each produces to see which one you prefer. The cooperative we use is the Cooperativa Nuestra Señora del Perpetuo Socorro in Diezma in the province of Granada. They produce an extra virgin olive oil from early harvest, picual olives using mechanical means. The oil is versatile and can be used for roasting, sautéeing, shallow-frying, dressing and drizzling. It contains no preservatives and is 100% nut free.

cooperative1WHAT HAPPENS AT THE COOPERATIVE
When it’s your turn, you first empty your bags of olives through the metal grid. The leaves and branches are then removed and the olives pass onto a conveyor belt and up to the weighing machine. As the olives proceed along the conveyor belt, a random sample of olives are collected for analysis. These are sent off the laboratory to measure the acidity level and this is used to calculate how many litres of olive oil you will be entitled to. Generally speaking, 5kg of olives produce 1 litre of oil. You can either opt to be paid in oil or in cash.
There are two way of collecting the olives: “vuelo” and “suelo”. The vuelo olives are collected directly from the tree whereas the suelo olives are picked up from the ground. A higher price is paid for the vuelo olives.

WORLD OLIVE OIL PRODUCTION
Spain produces around 50% of total global olive oil production. This is followed by Italy (15%), Greece (13%) and Turkey (5%).
Italy exports more oil than it produces and imports a lot of oil from Spain.

OLIVE OIL FAQ
See these links to BUY OUR OLIVE OIL and for our Olive Oil FAQ.

Easy way to prepare olives

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Olives in Salt

I have had many attempts at preserving and preparing olives but none of them worked very well until I found this simple technique.

When olives are prepared by any method we are basically doing two things. 1. Stopping the olives rotting. 2. Getting rid of some of the bitterness from the olives.

My technique is very easy. Just pick some black olives (the later you pick them the more oil content they have) then put them in a container with sea salt. It is best if the container is totally open at the top and it is good if the sun shines on them to evaporate some of the liquid. Mix them around every few days with a stick or with your hands. At first a lot of liquid collects at the bottom of the container. You can pour this off.

The salt draws the liquid and most of the bitterness from the olives. Eventually after about 6 weeks the olives become totally dry.

Separate them from the salt with a garden riddle or any other type of sieve. After this you have dessicated olives which you can store for as long as you like.

Every couple of days put a handful of olives in a glass jar of water in the kitchen. It takes anything between 8 and 48 hours for them to re-hydrate.  Put a handful of the re-hydrated olives on salads, pizzas or anything you want. If you put them in a bowl and them put a few drops of olive oil over them they taste and look  like the Greek olives I used to buy when I lived in Finsbury Park London.

 

Olive press

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I was really excited to find an olive cooperative where they press the olives using traditional methods to make the oil. The oil has a fuller, fruitier taste than other virgin olive oils but is fantastic. We had taken most of our olives from this year’s harvest to the normal cooperative but just found this one in time so that we could take the last load of olives there. Because of the rain, we weren’t able to finish picking all the olives but hopefully they will still be on the trees next time we go up and we can take them here. Here are some pictures of the cooperative with a brief explanation:

 

You park on the right of the grid and pour your olives through it.

You then use a broom to sweep through  any that are stuck on the rungs.

The olives don’t need to be cleaned before they are put through and twigs and leaves are removed in the next stage.

 

The olives are taken up from the pit by the first conveyor belt and air is blown through them to remove the leaves and twigs.

The clean olives then travel on a second conveyor belt to a third which takes them up further and then drops them into the green weighing hopper. The ones in the picture are actually our olives – all picked by hand that day.

Unfortunately the day we went it had been raining so the weighing scales weren’t working as they should have been and our olives only weighed in at 1kg – a bit disappointing. However, having unloaded them by hand and put them through  again it was a relief to see the correct weight on the scales – 370kg.

 

The next stage of the process goes on inside the building where the olives are milled and pressed. During the milling, the olives are passed through three rotating millstones to produce a sludgy mixture. This is then “iced” thickly onto plastic raffia mats.

 

The mats are threaded onto a pole which is then inserted into a press. By means of a system of chains and pulleys, the press compresses the mats upwards and oil comes out through a tap at the bottom of the press.

The subsequent bottling process takes another six months. Our oil should be ready in June and I’m looking forward to trying it.