LOCATION AND CLIMATE

 

As you might expect, olives grown in cooler areas where there is more moisture (rainfall and dew) exhibit leaner, more restrained characteristics.  This doesn’t however mean that great oil can now be made in Iceland – you need a minimum amount of sunshine to make your Extra Virgin Olive Oil taste remarkable, similarly to tomatoes or stone fruit.

Olive trees are sensitive to winter freeze (the Casaliva cultivar is more resistant to cold, hence being grown in the Garda region).  It is also easier to farm organically where the climate is more stable and less chemical sprays are required to keep the trees healthy.

OLIVE MATURITY

 

Here’s the thing – all olives are green.  When they become fully mature, they turn black.
Olive maturity at the time of harvest is a major factor in flavour and quality: olives harvested earlier (green olives) feature more bitter, grassy characteristics, with lower yields and with the highest anti-oxidant content.  The oil is a much more intense green colour and has a longer shelf-life.  In terms of production, milling can take longer with green olives (a longer malaxation - the action of slowly churning milled olives to release droplets of oil - is needed and can be more complicated) but the results are far superior!  Don’t choose olive oil from over mature fruit: it lacks all the potential goodness and flavour.

ATTENTION TO DETAIL IN GROVE AND MILL

 

People who care passionately about what they make and follow it personally every day have the capacity to create products with far higher quality, with integrity, and that taste of where they come from.  They are also able to do this by caring for the environment they inhabit.

FRANTOIO DI RIVA BOX

This box contains 6 bottles of extra virgin olive oil made exclusively by Frantoio di Riva from groves on the banks of lake Garda.

Frantoio di Riva, 46°PARALLELO green label x 3 bottles (50cl)
Frantoio di Riva, 46°PARALLELO organic white label x 1 bottle (50cl)
Frantoio di Riva, 46°PARALLELO blue label x 1 bottle (50cl)
Frantoio di Riva, ULIVA Garda Trentino DOP x 1 bottle (50cl)

How Extra Virgin Olive Oil is extracted from the olive | Frantoi
There are many different methods utilized to extract oil from olives, the method that we know most about and feel passionate about is that employed by each of our producers, so this is the method described here.
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Frantoi - Frantoio
June 5, 2020 In EVOO

How Extra Virgin Olive Oil is extracted from the olive

There are many different methods utilized to extract oil from olives, the method that we know most about and feel passionate about is that employed by each of our producers, so this is the method described here.

Hand harvested olives arrive in small crates at the frantoio (mill). They are almost all green, so have been harvested at the beginning of the harvest window. The olives are sorted by hand to remove anything that is unwanted and then dropped in to a stainless steel drum where air jets remove leaves and stems before washing.

 

The clean olives then travel into the mill itself where they are crushed into a paste (stones, skins and pulp) before moving in to a malaxer (which is a vat with a fan screw along the bottom that continuously turns the pulp coaxing out droplets of oil from the cell membranes of the olives. Time is of the essence because you want to avoid too much contact with oxygen, so there is a great deal of skill involved in the crushing and malaxing phases. The paste is then sent to a centrifuge that literally separates the oil from the skins, stones and flesh and then in to a smaller centrifuge to remove any water from the oil.

 

The oil is then filtered, to ensure it is stable – and this is another important choice to make – cloudy olive oil is not necessarily a good thing when you have shipped the oil to another country and it has probably been stored in various places at a broad range of temperatures as in the supermarket supply chain. Filtration ensures a bright, clean, stable Olive Oil that has a shelf life of up to 18 months.

 

The oil is then typically stored under a heavy gas (to prevent oxidation) in stainless steel tanks and then bottled to order. What we do at Frantoi is order our oil just once a year, directly after the harvest, when we are in the best position to evaluate its quality, health benefits and therefore its overall value. This gives you the longest shelf-life possible to enjoy your olive oil throughout the year.