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Olive Trees

Olive trees are often gnarled and twisted they are wonderful to look at. They often live for over a thousand years. They can be very severely pruned and this will often rejuvenate the tree to produce better fruits.
A newly planted tree will take around fifteen years to produce fruit. Maturing at around forty years. The wood of the olive can be carved and worked. The patination of olive wood is one of the richest and most beautiful of all woods.
It also burns slowly and is excellent for wood burning stoves. Acebucho - Olive tree
Aceitunas - Olives
Aceite de Oliva - Olive Oil

Olive Picking

Cristóbal our neighbour knocked on our door one evening in January.
It was 5pm. Cristóbal is a builder and he'd just finished for the day. He was now going to pick olives before the sun set around 6pm.
His son Adrian and father in law Sebastián were coming to help.
We all jumped in his van and headed into the campo. The tree we were going to pick the olives off was on a very steep slope.
The plains between Granada, Cordoba and Seville allow mechanised olive picking using machines like the one below. This was photographed at the Ronda Feria de Mayo. We were going to use a much more ancient and traditional method of harvesting olives. We were going to hit the branches with long sticks. If the tree is small the trunk can be beaten and shaken. Our tree was about eight metres high and quite large so this method wouldn't have much effect. It can also damage the tree. Large plastic sheets and nets were placed on the slope under the tree. It wasn't long before it was raining olives. Adrian and I ran around collecting Olives that bounced off the sheets. As you can imagine from the slope there were more olives bouncing off the sheets than staying where they were supposed to! Cristóbal climbs high in the tree to get the last of the olives. Night fell quickly. We collected the olives from the sheets. Olive Sieving and Sorting

The next night there was a knock at the door. Cristóbal beckoned me to follow him to a ruin that he uses as a store. I'd wondered how we were going to sort all the twigs, leaves and dried up olives from the good ones.
I thought it would take us hours and that we would sort them as we sat around the fire singing traditional Spanish olive sorting songs ...? I was wrong! They use a device called a cribar - a special sieve. The cribar was old and rickety. As is usual in Spain it had been mended with string. Why buy a hammer, nails or glue when a bit of string will do the job! The olives were rolled down the cribar. The twigs and leaves fell through. Two passes of each sack and they were sorted. The end result of five night picking - six boxes like this one full of sorted olives. Olive Pressing
At the weekend Cristóbal took us to the neighbouring pueblo of Algatocín to get his olives pressed.
We parked outside another ruined building. A temporary olive pressing plant had been set up inside. Firstly the olives were put into this machine and minced to a pulp. Next they were placed in flat circular nylon bags/sacks.
Around thirty of these olive filled sacks were stacked on the hydraulic press and gently squeezed. The juice ran into tubs on the floor.
From the state of the walls it looked as if the process had gone a little wrong one or two times. You can just see one of the flat nylon olive sacks in the photograph below. Originally they were made with hemp. The waste pulp, skins and stones were put in this trailer.
The smell in the room was incredible. a very intense fruity smell you could almost taste the olive oil. Cristóbal got 20 litres from his six boxes. The next week he took another six.
He kindly gave us a bottle of his Benarrabá Aceite de Oliva.
We sparingly used it on tostada's.
It was surprisingly light with a very flowery smell. Olive Oil The quality of olive oil depends on the quantity of Oleic Acid. Extra Virgen oils from mechanical pressings should contain less than 0.8%.
An excellent oil like Capricho Andaluz which isn't filtered and is a translucent green colour has a acidity of 0.4% which is very good.
It is excellent on tostada's and salads. It is too good to cook with.
We only buy Extra Virgen oils for using raw on toast and salads.
Other Olive oils are refined and mixed, they do not have the intense flavour of Extra Virgen Oils, they are best for cooking. A recent TV program suggests Extra Virgen Oils should only be used raw and not heated. Heating high quality oils can increase toxicity in them. Virgen Oils have an acidity of <2% Oleic acid.
Ordinary Virgen Olive Oils <3.3% Oleic acid.
Oil labeled as just Olive Oil is a blend of Virgen and refined oil. Other oils labeled as pomace/orujo oils should be avoided as they are cheap but flavourless. Used mainly for deep fat frying.

Olives - Aceitunas for Tapas

We started by splitting the olives. The black/purple olives have to have their skins cut using a device called a tabla.
This is me starting to push the olives through the tabla.
Sorry about the beard. This is the hole you push the olives through. It has four very sharp tin blades. You put an olive in the hole, then you use a second olive to push it through (not your finger!). You then push that olive through with another olive and so on ...
Tabla's seem to cost around 8€/£5.60. The hinged wooden bit on the end of the one above is used for crushing and splitting the olives. Apparently a mallet or flat stone does a better job. The green olives which are normally given as tapas with a beer are split using a wooden mallet. The idea of using a slice of cork oak as a table looked good but wasn't practical. A wooden tray with a raised edge is far better. Hitting the green olives bursts them open. I guess this violence also tenderises them.
Jane did the black olives and finished ten minutes before me.
The riper black olives just received razor blade nicks to their skins.
It took me about forty minutes to get through half a carrier bagful, it was also our first attempt. Next we put the olives into separate storage jars and filled them to the top with spring water. The containers were then placed in a dark pantry for the bitter Oleic acid to start leaching out through the split or cut into the water.
If tap water is used Chlorine move in the opposite direction and spoil the flavour of the olive.
We have to change the water every few days until the bitterness is gone.
Then a mix of salt, garlic, red peppers and Oregano ... is put in with the olives.
Details of this final mixture, how many water changes and how frequently they are done will be given here. We've done one water change after about ten days.
You have to be careful not to touch the olives as this may allow bacteria into the jar.
We used a large pan, colander and jug.
Top the jars right to the top with spring water so there is no air gap. After the final rinse you can add garlic, peppers, oregano and even chilies, to add a little flavour and aroma.

Worth trying if you have trees.