Well, from here on the temperature drops for the rest of the trip after a very windy and rainy night. Based upon previous experience in my overseas travel, as I figure it there is about a ten day to two week spread from weather that we have in the states to a variation of that same weather hitting across the pond. We had a cold snap in northern Illinois about two weeks before I left for Rome and, sure enough, the bottom dropped out of the temperatures in Italy about right on schedule. While it was a little cool but not cold to me, except for the wind, to look at the residents of the area one would think it was mid winter with puffy coats and hats with ear flaps. Saw the same thing one year in Tallahassee after a winter cold snap that brought the temperatures all the way down to the lower 50’s (10 C). Of course palm trees grow in both places so I guess they’re not used to the cold. Fabrizio said it was the coldest it had been in thirty years, lucky us. Fortunately I had brought a wind breaker because with the wind it was on the brisk side even I have to admit.
As one can see above the wind was whipping up the sea to where I would not have wanted to have been on it. But our first stop for the day was not the sea but an Olive Oil mill.
I am pretty sure this is not the case but it sure seems like every family in Italy has a small plot of land where they grow olives or grapes or lemons with which they make their own olive oil, wine or limoncello :-). This day we visited a co-op olive oil mill where folks can bring their olives to for processing.
Over my years of traveling in Italy I think I have seen every method of harvesting olives. In Calabria they laid nets underneath the olive trees and let the ripe olives drop to the nets gathering the nets when the trees were done shedding their fruit or they put ladders up and picked by hand. In Umbria there were tractors which would grab the trunk of the olive tree and shake the ripe olives loose gathering them into baskets which extended from the shaker. Between these two methods various tools are used such a small rakes with which one raked through the trees allowing the ripe olives to fall onto a net to a higher tech version of the rake which was powered by compressed air which vibrated as the rake moves through the tree to bring down more olives per pass. How the hell I became an expert on olive harvesting methodology I’ll never know but there it is. Fabrizio’s discussion of the topic was a great help though because while I had noticed all of the different methods I did not know that I had actually observed all of the different methods LOL.
So, each family, or farm without a mill, bring their grapes to this mill. Each group’s olives are segregated so each group gets only the yield from their own olives. This also means that between each batch, the system is cleaned so that olive oils from different groups do not mix. The mill of course charges a fee for this service but each family or farm gets several 5 gallon plastic bottles of oil, depending on their respective yield, as the final product.
The young lady who is part owner of the mill, whom I unfortunately did not catch her name, is a certified sommelier in both wine and olive oil. One of the most interesting facts that I learned during this presentation is that the color of the olive oil does not matter! However, all good olive oil is bottled or canned in containers which keep the oil from being exposed to light as that degrades the oil. You also want first press and cold press as this yields the freshest oil.
To taste Olive oil properly is similar to tasting wine, one tales a small amount in one’s mouth and gently suck in some air through one’s mouth to aerate the oil. As one does so the oil shifts back on the tongue to taste the bitter and as one swallows the oil it hits the back of the throat and one gets a peppery hit that was quite interesting. In addition we got to watch Geno (my name for him) the olive oil tasting dog. Geno was interesting. Now I like dogs, never met a dog that I didn’t like and as a general rule I can most of the time convince even the most skittish dog that I’m ok. I met Geno when we first drove up. He didn’t bark and would approach me as I held my hand out palm down to let him have a sniff but he would not come close enough to let me pet him or scratch his ears so of course I did not force the issue. The other thing that was interesting about Geno was that the only olive oil he would taste was from a cup that his mistress would give him. We all offered and he would come over and sniff, but he would not take the oil. But, if you gave his mistress your cup and she gave it to him he would….Smart dog.
As I said this day was a very busy day so I will post about our visit to the Art Agriturismo next. CIao for now!
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