La Tecnica Tradizionale
There are several modes and machineries used as olives become olive oils. Some of these are principally similar in transforming fruit to fluid, others particularly valued, all part of the tradition of adopting modern means to transition its flow over generations. Whichever technique one uses, it is common practice to regard its worth with respect to how well it crafts a particularly good oil; such as of a given cultivar at a given time of maturity for a given craftsman. According to the practitioners that I have the pleasure to conduct this research with, methods of harvest and extraction become perceived based on their suitability making the oil of their wish. Better yet, particular methods are by particular practitioners upheld as particularly favorable for certain reasons. These reasons are commonly related either to that which is regarded historically protective or technologically innovative. This post concerns the former. That is, the making of oil by means of antique methods, whereby the ancient craft through contemporary adjustments continues to flow. This method is — as part of contextually getting to know the traditions, techniques, and transitions through which Pugliese olive oils become in time and space from situated practices — utmost spectacular to explore.
Pictured to the right is Vito Pace, one of the research collaborators making use of tecnica tradizionale. He is the third generation running the mill of Leone Pace and beside him is one of the farmers that has his olives turned into olive oil the traditional way. Featured in the post are imageries also from another research collaborator making use of this particular pressing method; namely, Frantoio Pacello.
FRANGITURA CON MOLAZZA
Once the olives are dispatched, weighed, and poured into the funnel that acts the first station making this oil, the grinding of olives with large granite stone wheels takes place. Unlike the so called ‘modern‘ pressing technologies, in which excessive matters become sorted out, leaves and smaller branches become grinded with the olives, creating a particular sensorial experience both as the grinding occurs and as the end product — filtered and ready to enjoy — becomes consumed. This first part making olive oils through tecnica tradizionale takes roughly 30 minutes, and it is rhythmically undertaken every whole and half hour during the operating hours.
Every 30 minutes, Giovanni at Leone Pace pulls up the hatch, allowing for the smoothened olives-leaves-branches mass to fall into the gramola where the paste becomes further kneaded, awaiting to become spread onto the fiscoli.
L’ESTRAZIONE
Hydraulic presses act extraction technology producing olive oils modo tradizionale. Using a pressure of roughly 350 kg/cm, the machinery extracts oil from the layered stacks of olive paste, woven disks, and metal weights. Once spreaded and stacked — through the human touch and physical movement carried on in process — the dripping of a liquid called mosto takes place. This is a liquid constituting oil and water, and while it starts dripping already as the weight increases due the stacked gathering of olive paste and disks, the dripping accelerates as the stacks move into the presses. To the rhythmic sound of drops trickling down, and as the stacked piles becomes further and further compressed, the fruity smell of crushed olives fills the facility.
SEPARAZIONE & FILTRAZIONE
Approximately 1,5 to 2 hours of slowly being compressed in the vertical machinery that the colorful presses constitute, the water-oil mixture of mosto is moved; via tin containers and/or pipes to a centrifuge. Loud and vibrating, the centrifuge separates oil from water. It renders the mosto, now void of aqua, into the fatty liquid of olio. Almost ready to be enjoyed, the intensely coloured and immensely aromatic oil becomes mechanically filtered. This takes place through cotton fabric, and it aims to eliminate small sediments and particles that otherwise may ruin the quality of the oil. Through this last part of the process, unrefined oil becomes refined, then prepared to by one means or another become stored.
SANSA VERGINE
Once pressed to its maximum in the hydraulic presses, tipped from the woven disks and shipped to another production facility, the mass called ‘sansa vergine‘ becomes processed to extract the 2-4 percent of oil per 100 kg pomace that the byproduct yet contains. This oil, solvently refined in kind and low in cost, is in the particular case of the producer Leone Pace (via a ‘modern‘ pressing facility in Monopoli) sold to a focacceria in the nearby city of Bari. There, in the focacceria, it becomes used in its bread production. In other cases, the chemically enhanced product commonly referred to as pomace oil, may be mixed with other oils and sold as a food product to consumers in supermarkets. It may also be used to produce potato chips, or patatine industriale as Cosimo at Frantoio Pacello has it.
