All great olive oils depend on a couple of critical factors – the right climate and soil types. In general Northland has both but we do of course have the odd storm and a smidge of rain in the winter which can give us serious headaches and in some years however the worst enemy we face is a bad late spring when winds and rain can wipe out the flowers just as the olive is about to “set”. This can lead to a poor harvest.
But assuming that we have good Spring conditions, the fruit sets and we have a really sunny and hot summer with a few good periods of rain then we should be blessed with great olives which, if we pick at the right time, will mean great oils.
It’s pretty simple really – we just wish that Nature would give us that more often!
Once the fruit grows through to the ripening stage, going from a bright green hard fruit, changing to a butter yellow colour and then shades of a red blush or a purple appearing with a few black olives.
It is during these various changes in colour that experience tells us just when to pick to achieve different characteristics – from the green and yellow olives that produce a strong green and “grassy” oil with stronger pepper from the first early pick to the light golden coloured and “sweet delicate” taste which comes from ripe (lots of black fruit) late harvest pick.
And when we think it is the right time we work together to pick the crop using 12volt picking machines imported from Italy. These are designed to harvest the maximum fruit from the trees in the minimum time with the minimum of damage to olives and the trees.
We drop the olives onto large 6m wide x 50m long nets and then into the crates ready to take to the press house. Here any leaves and little branches are cleaned or blown away and the fruit is then washed. The olives are then put through a crusher and then “malaxed” or mixed for 30 – 40 minutes until you can see the olive separating from the rest of the paste.
It is then that the paste is either put onto mats for the traditional hydraulic press OR the centrifuge press.
After all this the oils are tested and in order to qualify for the Extra Virgin Olive Oil status our oils must have an acidity level of less than 0.8% and be obtained by mechanical means only i.e. no chemicals can be used in obtaining the oil. It must be processed only once, be “cold pressed” and not subjected to heat above 30°C.
It all sounds pretty simple really and Mother Nature can sure test you BUT when you take your first taste of a toasted piece of Ciabatta bread which has been rubbed with raw garlic and then drowned in fresh new seasons Extra Virgin Olive Oil you know that it was truly worth all the angst and stress and the waiting – for us there is simply nothing as exciting as that 1st taste each harvest season!
I hope you enjoy our oils as much as we do!
John Bishop – Founder of The Bay Gourmet. In his favourite place – under an ancient olive tree in Europe.