mAkiNg oLiVe Oil iS aN aRt...

We had an amazing experience yesterday and I'd like to give you my full report about how Olive Oil is produced in this particular "Lagar" (Press)...

Unfortunately there are not so many anymore, when once there was at least one for each village... it's not actually something we can make on our own...not as easy anyway for a ton of olives...

we got to see how it was made in the old days... but it would be still impossible for us to do it that way... it's a complex process and lots of work...
so, let me guide you on a tour, as they did with me on the "Lagar" in "Sobral do Campo"...

the day actually started very early when the sun was not even up...after my short night taking care of Mischu, I woke up at 6am to leave around 7...it was freezing...literally...

it's the second frost this year... I even had to clean the front window of the car to be able to drive...
We went to pick up Tia Adelina (our neighbour ) who lives in the village...she knew the way, and we were carrying our olives together in the tractor of Sr. Marcelo... 

a very nice man who gave me the tour in the "lagar"... he has been coming here for many years with other people´s olives... he has a tractor with a trailer and does the service...  for me all of it was an exciting adventure and I learned a lot about olive oil ...

So, here's Sr. Marcelo emptying the tractor to a huge funnel where all the process starts... You can see on the first picture on this blog, the big piles of olives that people unload... this part is for those who press the oil from their own olives, and you need to have more than 500 kl for that... 

from the big funnel they come through this map where they get washed and cleaned from leaves and other stuff...

then they fall on this big container that takes them into another machine...

here they are warmed and crushed... ready to go to the next machine... 

This one here throws the waste waters out...actually, all these waters go to a huge tank called "hell"...I thought that was funny...

And from the same machine, on the front side... the olive oil comes out... beautiful... all this with a process of hot water... and pretty complex systems inside those machines... the pots you see in front of the picture are the measures to take the olive oil out of the big container where it's dropped ...

And here are the huge containers of the "lagar", where then they serve the clients who want to buy... this is for the ones who sell their olives and bring olive oil in exchange without waiting for the whole process... others, like us, pressed our own olives and brought our own olive oil home... 

This is the "waist" from the crushed olives...which is not actually a waist at all... nothing is a waist here... even in "hell", they still go there and take some olive oil out after another process...

this "waste" here is still crushed again and some weaker oil is still extracted, good for frying...

the dried "waist" is used for the furnace that warms the water that is going to be used for the machines that make the olive oil ...Wow, this is a nice closed cycle...

Here is the older Machine, with 2 huge stones called "Mó"... it's still working...they run it for us to see...

The paste from the first grinding would have been put in layers on this mats and these big presses would have smashed them into oil...

Lets have a look at our own olives now 

being crushed...

Coming out on the last machine...

And here it is ! beautiful... and tasty ! Liquid gold...

Here they were filling up the containers for us to take...

This is all the olive oil we took... not ours, this is Tia Adelina's and some other people from Povoa de Atalaia that Sr. Marcelo brought...

with our 200 Kl of Olives we took 30 liters of olive oil... I still paid 25 Euros for the "Lagar"... I could have given them 6 liters of our olive oil, but it was not so much, so I thought it would be better to take it all...

Tia Adelina paid Sr.Marcelo for the transport, and she wouldn't let me pay my share as I took the car she said... bless her !

I still got a present from the owner of the "Lagar"... a bin to make our water heater...Hmmm... warm showers soon !
This was really cool too...actually, all the people there were very friendly... it was like a big family...
May God allow this work to continue for many years and many generations...they started 40 years ago this one...and many are closing because they cannot keep up with the demandings of the EU regulations...
There is very good olive oil in Portugal, but we just cannot compete with the prices...
I guess we need more fair trade here as well...