Olive Harvest

As the year draws to a close a new chapter begins. For several days we picked, cleaned and packed our olives into sacks ready to be taken to the Lagar (Press). This year we had a bumper crop but before we could pick two heavy rain storms came in from the North and we lost some of our harvest. That aside, we had our best harvest so far. We wanted to press our olives cold to maximise the quality of the oil rather than  quantity. We have a local Lagar in Pedrogao Pequeno (our nearest village) but they mix the olives and heat the pulp prior to pressing. Whilst this results in more oil extracted, you don't get your own olive's oil back and the oil has been heated which effects the quality of the oil.

We packed up our olives and drove to the village of Sobrar where the Lagar uses modern machinery but does not heat the pulp and guarantees you get your own oil back. We arrived at 4pm and to our surprise they were ready for us - this doesn't always happen in Portugal. Our olives were weighed and dropped down into a hopper where they were gravity fed into a triple screw crusher...the aroma in the room cannot be explain other than to say...heavenly.

After about 20 minutes of grinding the olive pulp is ready to be poured onto cloth mats and placed one on top of another until the pressing is ready (approximately 500 kilos per pressing). Once our pressing was assembled the stack was wheeled over to the press and for the next hour slowly pressed using a steam driven press exerting around 300 lbs per square inch. The oil slowly runs off together with the water contained within each olive into settling tanks.

Our olives now pressed and the oil and water run off into settling tanks where it stayed for 24hours - left nothing left to do than to retire to the Adega (wine cellar) for a glass or two of the local wine. The next day around 4pm we returned to pick up our cold pressed virgin olive oil....fresh, green and peppery. With slices of fresh bread, salted olives, sun-dried tomatoes and newly pressed oil...supper was a delight...not forgetting the wine to round off the occasion.