OIL 2008

Last year was one of the best years for olive oil that most of my friends have experienced. The quantity was good, and the quality was out of site. Of course I wrote reams of things about it on this blog, but I just realized that I have not written about the 2008 crop.

Of course whatever oil one does not use one year must be relegated to a new role of starting barbecue fires and lighting the way with oil lamps. One just does not use old oil here. Not when there is fresh to be had.

I also must admit that when I lived in the states, we used a liter or two of olive oil a year. My usage has gone up to about 10 or 15 liters per year, and I always get fifteen liters to see me through the year, which leaves enough to light fires with the next year. I thought I was using a lot of oil, but then I found out that it is normal for a family of two to use fifty or more liters a year, and of course if at all possible the oil must be from olives grown and pressed by a friend, or at the very least the friend of a friend.

The Planeta family has started an olioficcio near here, and one of their oils is considered one of the best 30 olive oils in the world. Their land, and indeed most of the land around here, is in the Mazz de Vall DOP, which is a special area for olives and olive oil, and the growth and production are carefully monitored in order to gain the DOP designation. This DOP includes land in all of the Palermo province, as well as in the area along state route 115 from Castelvetrano to Ribera, and includes mountain villages like Caltabellota and Calamunaci.

A friend of mine in the states, who prides himself on his gourmet northern Italian cooking, was actually excited when he heard that I lived in this DOP, as even he was willing to concede the oil from this area is the best.

But as usual, I digress.

Of course I got some oil from my usual friends. Toto brought me oil from his olivetti in Caltabellotta, and Pascal and Toto of Verditecnica again gave me some of their oil from the hillside behind Sciacca. Calogero, Maria, and Paola Colletti, of my favorite panneficcio, gave me some of their oil. I bought a good bit and sent it on to the states or carried it over when I went for Jon's wedding, so I still needed to visit the Cucchiari brothers olioficcio here in Sciacca.

I had a friend from Germany with me, and when we arrived I found my friend Acursio from Agape unloading his olives. He offered to sell me some of his oil, again grown between Caltabellotta and Sciacca, so we made arrangements to buy six five liter cans from him.

Of course we had to make sure it was his oil, so he made arrangements for his oil to be pressed at 6 AM the next morning. When we got there, not only was Acursio waiting, but also my friend Calogero, who had been a waiter at La Vela restaurant at the port, and was working at the olioficcio again, as he waited for the rebuilding of the restaurant he had moved to to be rebuilt after a fire had destroyed it.

The picture at the top is of the three of us getting together, as Acursio's olives are being pressed.
The next picture is of the olives waiting to be loaded into the processing plant. Then you can see Acursio overseeing the olives being washed, crushed, and the oil being extracted, until the golden green oil pours out the other end, where it is again filtered, then weighed, checked for acidity, and finally stored in huge storage tanks, after the owner of the olivetti has taken his (and his family's and his friends') supply of oil. There it waits to be bottled or canned and labelled and shipped out, or it waits for bulk containers to be shipped to other producers, to be mixed with their oil to bring the quality up (and the acidity down) to 'Extra Virgin', as this is the best oil around.