Making Olive Oil with Dancing Ewe Farm

Every year, Jody and Luisa from Dancing Ewe Farm spend their fall and winter in Italy.  This year they decided they would make their own olive oil and it bring back to the United States.  The oil is now available on their website and starting Saturday May 22 they will be selling it at the Brooklyn Flee. 

There are only just over a thousand bottle of this fantastic clean and complex flavored oil in existence, so be sure to get yourself a bottle fast.  If your lucky maybe you'll get a bottle with one of the 3 or 4 olives that I picked.

See how the oil is made after the jump.

If you remember episode I of the Dairy Show (if you don't watch it now), you know that Jody and Luisa like to do things right.  They spent the months of November and December harvesting olives from trees on farms in Luisa's home town of Manciano, which is in southern Tuscany.  They picked olives from over 200 Pendolino, Soriolo, Leccino, and Frantoio trees. 

To begin the process, first nets are spread out under the trees.  The olives are then picked off of the trees using either a pneumatic or a hand rake, and dropped onto the nets.  Once the nets are full of olives, they are gathered up and large stems are removed.  The olives a placed into cassettes and delivered the same day to the Frantoio or Olive Mill.

At the mill a machine removes the remaining stems and washes the olives. 
Next they are crushed and and the paste is put into a mixing machine.  This mixing stage is called Malaxation and is important because it allows the oil globules to aggregate so that they will separate out more easily from the solids and water.

After Malaxation the paste is transferred to a centrifuge where it is spun at very high speeds.  The centrifuge is continuously cooled, so that no heat is transferred to the olive oil.  The centrifuge will separate the oil and water from the solids. 
Once this separation is complete, the oil and water mix is transferred to another centrifuge which separates the oil from the water.  Check out the color of that oil! Once the oil was separated Jody and Luisa stored it in a large container for a month or so to let any other solids settle out.  They then bottled it and brought it to the US for us to enjoy.