As I mentioned a few weeks back, it’s been a very lean year for olives. This week, Tessa and I managed to harvest all of our crop in a single day – a job that took four people four days last year. And the results are predictably depressing: barely 10% of last year’s take – maybe 2 month’s worth of olive oil. It’s like this all over Le Marche, probably because of the drought over the summer, and the price of oil is shooting up.

But lean year or not, it was worth a trip to the olive press in Massa Fermana today to take some videos of how they do it. Where last year the press was in operation 24-hours a day (Lino had to settle for a 3am slot and he’s a respected man down there) this year they told us we could come anytime this afternoon. Last year the boys at the press looked hag-ridden and irritable, a parade of vans steadily disgorged a stream of crates into the warehouse, and people hurried in all directions. This year was slightly different:

But at least the lull allowed me to get good shots of the process. And the boys at the machinery didn’t seem to mind the intrusion – they seemed almost grateful for a break in the tedium. Last year I reckon I’d have been run down by a wheelbarrow. I had the chance to ask them a few questions, some of which they answered. When I asked about what makes oil virgin or extra virgin they looked at me blankly. Just press your olives like the rest of the punters and take your oil home, they seemed to say.

Here’s the first step: shaking the leaves out of the olives and dropping the olives under the millstones. The boys skip the shaking part for those who are unwise enough to miss their appointed time, which makes for twigs and leaves in the ground paste and much poorer flavour in the resulting oil.

Here’s a closer look at the olives under the millstones. Amazing how fast they do their job.

Once the olives have been crushed (stones and all) the paste drops into a mixing trough where it’s warmed before being extruded onto rattan disks for pressing. These disks slide onto special wheel barrows, which when stacked high with disks and paste are wheeled into large hydraulic presses. A robotic arm does the loading and unloading of the barrows:

And here are the barrows on the presses. Over the course of an hour, the pressure steadily builds to about 500kg/cm² (7000 lbs/inch²) and most of the oil and water runs down the stack and into a trough. From here, the mix enters a centrifuge where the water is spun off and the bright green oil pours into whatever receptacle you’ve brought with you.

The fresh oil is bitter but interesting. Gian Paolo served it to us on crostini a few weeks back and I enjoyed it, though you wouldn’t want it everyday. It’ll be another few months before the oil is mature enough to use normally.

Finally the remnants that are left on the disk after pressing are dumped in a pile outside the pressing room. This material is used to make a cheap cooking oil and the by-products of making this cheap oil are then pressed into logs for wood-burning stoves.