Halloween harvest! As I wrote in an update to my recent Oak tree down post, this year we're splitting our harvest across two dates, nine days apart. The first date was today.
Why the split? One reason is the mess created a couple of weeks ago by a series of collapsed telephone poles in our upper grove (see the oak tree post). We also want to give about half of our olives additional time and sunshine to further ripen and shed some of the water they've absorbed during the record rainfalls of the past few weeks. October alone brought our groves almost 20cm of rain, and that was after a pretty wet September. It's been years since we've seen this much rain heading into our olive harvest.
And we're not just splitting our harvest, we're splitting the type of processing we're using to make our 2024 oil. Today's 420 kg of fruit, harvested primarily from trees in our inner grove, were processed on what's known locally as a Pieralisi line (named for one of the leading makers of the equipment that's used).
The Pieralisi process is highly kinetic (the fruit never stops moving) and ends with a massive high-speed centrifuge stage. That centrifuge is very effective at separating and discarding the acqeous components of pressed olives. So, while the processing temperature is a little higher with Pieralisi than with alternative processes (and lower temps are generally considered better), water-logged fruit responds well to the Pieralisi treatment. Another Pieralisi plus is the option to produce "unfiltered" extra virgin olive oil (or "evoo"). The line's powerful centrifuge stage gives the mill and the producer the option of omitting the final cellulose filtration that's mandatory in the slower, lower-temp T.E.M. process that has become popular in these parts (our 2023 oil was produced exclusively on a T.E.M. line).
Unfiltered evoo contains organic solids in suspension. As a result, it has a bright, acid-green, cloudy appearance, especially when fresh. On the tongue, palate, and in the throat unfiltered evoo has a rustic "zing", which, however, can degrade into a rougher, "dirtier" taste as the oil ages. Unfiltered evoo
is prized by locals for its rich flavor, but is usually shunned by conoisseurs and importers. The former feel that all those organic solids mask the finer notes in an olive oil's taste, making most unfiltered evoos from the same area taste much the same. The latter are instead aware of its limited shelf-life: unfiltered evoo is best enjoyed in the first 60 days after pressing (a flyer accompanying our tins will note this). It's also a matter of fashion. A few years ago unfiltered oil was all the rage here in Tuscany. Now even some locals are starting to turn their noses up at it. When we dropped off our olives at the Frantoio Grevepesa today and confirmed the work order to reception the person who took the order looked me in the eye and asked "Unfiltered? Are you sure?" I was sure.
We obtained 50 liters (46 kg) of unfiltered evoo through today's Pieralisi pressing, an 11% yield by weight: rather better than the uncharacteristically low 7 to 9% that has thus far been the norm this year, at least locally. With all that water in the fruit, the olives have been heavy, but the added weight doesn't translate into any more oil, just more waste-water than usual, pushing down yields.
Our 2024 unfiltered oil will be note "October" as the month it was produced. We'll add a red "unfiltered" sticker to our tins to further distinguish them from those we'll be filling with a T.E.M. pressing in nine days' time. Early next week I'll bring a sample of our 2024 Pieralisi evoo to the ISVEA lab for a partial analysis, giving us numbers for polyphenol content, acidity, and oxidation. So far I can only say the flavor profile is rounder than expected: grassy but not burly with a soft but distinct peppery finish.
And what of the experience? Splitting the picking made for an unhurried pace compared with last year. The weather was picture perfect, matching last October's bright sun but with a lusher feel underfoot thanks to all the rain we've had. It was warm too, with everyone in T-shirts by midday. The team
was both sweet and strong: a gobsmackingly industrious and musical family of five (Helena, Robin, Harris, Elisha and Arrafin) from Liverpool, England, my American friend Chuck (who made the cover of last year's Harvest 2023 post) and his British sweetheart Diana, my son Elio and his girlfriend Alice, my partner Giovanna and our little boys Max and Sam, Giovanna's friend Sari and her sister Satu and Satu's partner Nicklas, all from Sweden (and all tireless), my cousin Maurizio (Florence born and bred and an old hand at this) and of course our master pruner Vittorio (a young-old hand). It was very rewarding to me to see all those people working together in our inner and outer groves. And probably 90% of our 22-crate haul was combed out of our trees by hand (minimal use of electric shakers) starting around 7 this morning, ending just before 3 this afternoon . The fruit was gorgeous: plump and unbruised and entirely organically grown... though not yet certified organic (that's coming, but still a few years out). All that goodness was in Grevepesa's Pieralisi machinery by 4 PM, and we picked our oil up two hours later.
Postscript, November 4: I dropped off a sample of our 2024 unfiltered evoo to ISVEA this morning for an analysis of three key parameters: acidity, peroxide content (a measure of oxidation) and polyphenol content (polyphenols are the antioxidants in olive oil). When I arrived, there was a gaggle of at least fifty plastic bottles on the counter, each meticulously labeled and filled with what looked like red or white wine. "Uh-oh, this is gonna take a while," I thought. I pulled out my tiny jar of oil and handed it in, hoping to hear back by the end of the week. But within an hour I had an email that the sample had been formally accepted, and already this evening I opened an email with the results!
At 0.26%, our 2024 evoo's acidity is just about half last year's still respectable 0.49. Our peroxide value is also much lower than last year's: 5.7 meq O2/kg vs 10.7. Polyphenol content, at 344 mg/kg, is well above the EU's floor of 250 mg/kg for "high polyphenol" oils but rather lower than last year's eye-popping 530 mg/kg. We may see that polyphenol value climb somewhat when we harvest and press the remainder of our crop this coming Saturday in Grevepesa's T.E.M. line. The slower, lower temp T.E.M. process, which we used for all our evoo in 2023, tends to yield higher polyphenol values. Nine more sunny days to further ripen our fruit will likely help as well. I'm struck by today's low peroxide (oxidation) figure. But the comparison with last year's may not be entirely fair, since in 2023 we brought our oil to ISVEA about three months after pressing. We store our evoo carefully, but it's reasonable to expect that a three-month old olive oil will have oxidized somewhat. It might be interesting to re-test this batch of unfiltered oil three months from now, to see if the peroxide figure has climbed to a value close to 2023's.
Comments