Olio d'Oliva

Cue (NZERS), Issue 31, 15 September 1945, Page 10

Olio d'Oliva

CiEVERAL horse and mule-drawn O carts were standing outside the 'building as Tony and his companion walked towards it. It was just an erdinary-looking building, similar in most respects to the usual casa of any average street in any average toicn in southern Italy, There, that's the olive oil factory” Tony said.

' Tony had been enthusiastic when asked if he would-show the stranger the inside of a typical Italian olive oil factory. He spoke English as well as any elderly Italian could who had spent ten years working on a railroad in the United Stateshad, in fact, acted as interpreter for Allied forces since the occupation of southern Italy. Yes, Tony would be glad to oblige.

As all good guides do, Tony started at the beginning. ’’Those carts you see there,’’ he said, ’’belong to the farmers. Each farmer brings his own crop to the factory.”

’’Yes,” said the stranger, sniffing the air; ’’you can smell their crops from here.”

’Oh, no, that smell comes from inside the factory. You’ll notice it more when you get inside.” As the guide and his companion approached the stone building the noise of whirring machinery from within grew louder. At the entrance the stranger

paused to sniff again, and mentally agreed with his guide’s last remark. Even the aromas of the dirty street of a southern Italian town outside were submerged in the all-pervading smell of olive oil.

’’Right,’’ he added, ’’l’ll show you what they do to the olives from the time they come into the factory. This is the scale they are weighed on as soon as th*y cc-me into the factory.’’ The scale indicated was a balance with a platform, and a dial measured off in kilograms. There were no olives on the scale at the moment, some having just been taken off. The farmer whose load had just been weighed was walking, into the manager’s office with one of the factory hands. ”H-e’s going to collect his lire for his crop,” explained Tony, ’’and at the same time he picks up a supply of oil for himself and his family. The oil has been rationed since the war, you know, and even the farmer only gets the same ration as anybody else. The industry is govern-ment-controlled” (that’s a familiar phrase, thought the stranger), ’’and every kilo of olives and every kilo of oil in the factory has to be accounted for. Government inspectors check the books in the manager’s office every once in a while and he goes to jail i he’s caught trying to keep some of s oil for the black market.”

The two men were now in a doorway on the opposite side of the room to the presses, and were looking into another large room where olives were piled in heaps, reaching almost to the roof in places. ’’This,” said Tony, ’’is where the olives are put after they’re weighed. They’re picked a bit before they’re ripe and kept for ten or fifteen days in this storeroom. Then they go into the mill” (he moved along to the large basin they had seen from the entrance) ’’where they’re bruised. The basin holds 350 kilos.” It could be seen now that there were three stone wheels, each turning on a horizontal axle. Their axles ran to the centre of the basin, and were turned by cogs on a perpendicular shaft. The machine was powered by an electric motor, from which a belt ran to the mill. Just then the motor was switched off, and the room seemed strangely quiet after the grinding din of the stone wheels had stopped.

Looking into the basin the stranger saw that it was about two feet deep, and nearly full of a pulpy, soupy mixture. ’’That’s the sansa,' 9 said Tony, ’’and now it’s ready for pressing.” He turned to indicate several men who were carrying oddly-shaped containers to the presses. Several empty containers lay on the ground, and looked like circular mats made of two thicknesses of fibrous material, with a hole through the middle of them. When Tony lifted one up by the centre to show his companion, the bottom sagged and the container took on a diamond shape. ’’They call these cocchi” said Tony, again leaving to his companion the task of translating an untranslatable term. ’’These cocchi are made from Indian hemp. They also make cocchi in Albania, but they’re not as good as the Indian ones. The Albanian ones are made from a kind of river reed. Now watch how the sansa is pressed.”

He moved along to the first of the line of seven presses. A man was

standing by it, taking the cocchi, filled with sansa, from the boys who filled them, and stacking them, one on top of another, on the platform of the press. It took fourteen to fill the space between the bottom of the press and the top. ’’lsn’t this the same sort of press they use for vino?” Tony was asked.

’’Yes, that’s right,” he answered. ”In fact, they use these presses here earlier in the year for making vino. Pressing olives requires more work than making vino though. There, they’ve turned on the power for the press now. Watch how the bottom of the press rises. The machinery in this factory is modern all-electric. Most small factories have handworked machines —then the men really have to work.”

By this time the oil was trickling sluggishly down the cocchi into the tray-shaped bottom of the press. A spout projecting from the curved edge of the tray overhung a drum held in a small well. The oil could be seen dripping from the spout into the drum.

’’They squeeze the olives in this (press for one and half to two hours,” said Tony. ’’Then the sansa is taken out of the cocchi and put through this machine,” and he pointed to a contraption very much like another kitchen implement on a large

scalethis time a kind of a mincing machine? ’’That crushes it still further and prepares it for the next pressing.”

’’Then how' many pressings do the olives get?”

”In this factory only two, but after that the sansa, goes to the larger factory you have probably seen in the main street just cut of the town. All of the twenty small factories in the town send their sansa there after they have finished with it. They have bigger machinery in the big factory and get two more pressings from the sansa. Each time the sansa is pressed, though, 'the oil is of poorer quality and oil from the /bigger factory is mostly used for machine oil, and for making soap.

’’Well, this is the press used for the second pressing,” said Tony, indicating one of two presses differing from the other seven. Whereas the others consisted merely of circular pieces of iron at top and bottom, and two perpendicular bars connecting them, the ’’super-press”, as Tony called if, had a metal framework at the sides. Cocchi with the minced sansa had just been loaded into the super-press and the power (the super-press was also electrically driven) turned on. As in the other presses, the oil ran into a drum in a well in the floor, but it ran more slowly this time, and was not as dark in colour.

’’The force behind this press is three thousand kilos,” said Tony. ’’The oil from the super-press is only secondgrade ; the very best olive oil comes from the first pressing. The oil you see coming from the super—press contains water, which is removed by this separating machine.’’ The machine he pointed to was almost the same as a milk separator, except that it had three spouts instead of two. One of

the factory hands was pouring the liquid from the super-press ’ into a large tank connected with the separator. ”If he pours too much in at once,” he explained, ’’the 'overflow goes out the third spout at the back there, and falls in that-drum unseparated, and is put back in the tank.”

Steady streams were, pouring from both the other spouts, the oil falling in a drum, and the water through a hole in the floor. ’’Look at that stream of water,” • said 'Tony,- ’’see how it’s slightly oily? That water isn’t thrown away. There’s a big tank under the floor, and they keep the water there until the end of the season, then they skim off- the oil. So you can see they don’t waste much.

’’Well, you’ve seen all the processes that the olives go through in this factory. Every hundred kilos of olives brought in produces about twenty kilos of oil, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on the season. , Further north, too*, they get more oil from the same quantity of olives. Here we. get fourteen kilos from the first pressing, six from the second, and one from skimming the water which leaves the separator.”

Tony and his companion turned away. There was still one more item of interest, a row of drums against the far wall of the store-room, and into these the visitor peered. ’’The finished product,” said Tony. There was the oilolive oil, rich and clear, and looking much as it must always have looked since Biblical times, when it supplied the Mediterranean peoples with food and fuel. Modern times; modern methods; but the result was the same.

But it was all very commonplace to Tony. After all, Italians, had been making olive oil for a long time.