Liquid gold; harvesting autumn olives in Murcia

The earthy smell of crushed olives evokes a smug satisfaction throughout the year

With the weather remaining in the high 20’s, canny finca owners can take advantage of the influx of autumn visitors to share one of the more pleasurable tasks which must be undertaken during the autumn; bringing in the olive crop and generating your own liquid gold.

Much of the olive crops generated by smaller finca owners, or those who just have a couple of trees in the back garden, are taken to co-operatives where the olives are pooled to make an earthy green oil by crushing the different varieties of olives together, and the olive oil mills (almazaras) will exchange olives for oil, charging a small fee for pressing and bottling.

The reality of olive oil production is that much of the cheaper “olive oil” sold in supermarkets actually contains a high percentage of white oil, which is totally flavourless, blended with a small quantity of olive oil. Much of this is extracted from the pulp left after cold pressing to obtain the best Extra Virgen and Virgen oils.

Oil aficionados will sit and debate the merits of a piquant piqual, against the peppery smoothness of the arbequina and the apple intensity of the hojiblanca, but the reality is that there is no oil on earth better than your own and even though olives are pooled for crushing at the almazaras, there is only one thing more satisfying than arriving at the mill with a bootful of olives and leaving with fruity olive oil fresh off the press, and that’s sharing a plateful of thickly sliced fat local tomatoes and sliced queso fresco, liberally doused with your own oil and lightly sprinkled with a few grains of sea salt and fresh oregano, mopped up with bread baked in a log-fired oven.

So even if you have a bucket or two of olives from your own trees, take them down to a local almazara for pressing and enjoy the fruits of all this Murcian sunshine.

Although specialist oil producers will pick some olives when they’re intensely green to make piquant oils, most tree owners pick when the majority of their crop has swollen and assumed a pinkish blush, but as there are so many varieties the best advice is to wait until the Spanish neighbours start to pick and then do the same! Pick everything from the tree once you start and don´t worry that some olives will be almost green while others on the same tree are as black as a blackberry and don´t worry about mixing varieties.

It’s interesting to look at the wide variety of olives at the processing plant, as there are so many sizes and colours, and that is why a sample is taken from each of the batches of olives brought into the plant in order to ascertain the oil content.

Although it’s tempting to plant heavy cropping larger varieties, the smaller olive varieties generally contain a higher percentage of oil, so the almazara will crush a sample and analyse the oil content before making an offer for your olives.

Generally the offer will be a certain amount of oil in return for the olives, with a price for crushing and bottling included. It varies considerably depending on the variety, but in general 5-6 kilos of olives will yield one litre of oil.

It’s advisable to take olives to the almazara within 24 hours of picking and to clean most of the leaves and twigs out of the bucket first. Although a machine separates the leaves from the olives, a lot of debris in your olives will result in a lower price being offered as the leaves go in the testing crusher along with the olives, and the resulting mush will therefore have a lower oil content.

Practicalities
The easiest way to harvest olives is by using nets, which are quite simply the most practical way to ensure that everything that falls off the tree ends up in the mill.

Larger concerns have mechanized picking tools, but most tree owners will lay down nets under the trees and pick by hand.

On rural properties, such as our own, trees were planted on the edge of cereal fields or alongside water run-offs in order to take advantage of the rains when they fell, the result being that picking the trees is never straightforward, as the edges of the nets must be propped up with baskets or stones to prevent the crop bouncing off into a dry waterway or disappearing off down the hill.

It’s easier to completely surround the tree, using two overlapping nets, and it’s advisable to peg the nets around the trunk tightly as the olives will inevitably find the gap around the trunk and sit in a little pool at the base. It’s also a good idea to check around the base of the tree before lifting the nets and checking the perimeter in case a prop has slipped and a pool of olives manage to secure an escape.

Picking is done by isolating a branch, then running hands down along the branches, one at a time, in a combing action.

The nets are gathered and the resulting crop poured into baskets or buckets for transport to the almazara.

Although crates or bags will do just as well, the ed. always uses hand-woven esparto grass baskets which have been acquired at encuentros de cuadrillas across the region over the years, and will readily confess to a child-like thrill of pleasure as the net is pulled away and a mass of blushing purple toned olives are revealed in the cocoon of the esparto weave.

The very first time olives from the finca were harvested was with the family from whom the property was purchased, when the former owners arrived en-masse, along with sweet little ground almond cordiales and a plastic bottle of sweet Jumilla wine to wash them down as refreshment.

It was a warm autumn morning and the memory of standing in the middle of the tree, feeling an uplifting elation that we’d made the break to Spain and were doing something we’d dreamed of doing for so many years, with the warm wind and the sun accentuating the smell of crushed olive leaves as we raked down the branches with our hands is something which recurs every time we start the harvest, and although it’s slow and laborious work, is totally fulfilling.

And every time a drop of “our own” oil is sprinkled over a salad there’s a smug feeling of satisfaction and an intense pleasure in savouring that earthy green oil from our local almazara.

We always laugh now that the former owners gave us a bottle of oil from the previous year before disappearing off with the entire crop, although we were later told that rather than being anxious to show the new owners where to take the crop for processing the former owners were simply making sure they secured the crop which they viewed as “theirs” as they had cared for the trees before selling the property!

However, we’re eternally grateful for the insights gained that morning, and the sight of a mini mountain of ground almonds atop rice paper, the smell of freshly crushed olives or a little glass of sweet wine after a meal always brings back that first sense of elation and the pleasure of being part of that process of making real Spanish olive oil.

Images: Visiting family members offered to help with the first pick this autumn
Our olives go to the Almazara Gimenez Casanova, Ctra. Alhama-Fuente Álamo, Paraje La Jorge, Fuente Álamo, Tel: 651 857 262. Just google almazara and your local town name for a local mill.