California Producers of Organic Olive Oil

Many California producers have optioned to make the gourmet treat classified as EXTRA VIRGIN and market thru gourmet food stores, wineries, and farmers markets. It is common that these oils are produced on smaller estate orchards, hand picked to not bruise the fruit, processed within 48 hours, cold pressed and either filtered or left unfiltered for a more robust flavor. It is the most natural health food product available.

The CALIFORNIA OLIVE OIL COUNCIL has pettitioned the United States Dept of Agriculture to adopt the International standards for grades of olive oil. Then the truth in labeling can be ascertained.

Olive Oil Info

Lable Wording

"100% Pure Olive Oil" is often the lowest quality available in a retail store: better grades would have "virgin" on the label.


"Made from refined olive oils" means that the taste and acidity were chemically controlled.

"Light olive oil" means refined olive oil, with less flavour. All olive oil has 120 kcal/tbsp. (34 kJ/ml).

"From hand-picked olives" implies that the oil is of better quality, since producers harvesting olives by mechanical methods are inclined to leave olives to over-ripen in order to increase yield.

"First cold press" is generally a purely commercial wording with no factual meaning. It suggests that the oil in bottles with this label is the "first oil that came from the first press" of the olives and that no heat is used. This is incorrect.

First of all, "cold" does not define any precise temperature. A certain exception is made for the European regulation which requires that the processing temperature be below 27 °C in order to be named "cold pressed". In cooler regions like Tuscany or Liguria the olives collected in November and ground often at night are too cold to be processed efficiently without heating. The paste is regularly heated above the environmental temperatures, which may be as low as 10-15 °C, in order to extract the oil efficiently with only physical means. Olives pressed in warm regions like Southern Italy or Northern Africa may be pressed at significantly higher temperatures although not heated. While it is important that the pressing temperatures be as low as possible (generally below 35 °C) there is no international reliable definition of "cold pressed".

Furthermore there is no "second" press of virgin oil, so the term "first press" is meaningless.

The label may indicate that the oil was bottled or packed in a stated country. This does not necessarily mean that the oil was produced there. The origin of the oil may sometimes be marked elsewhere on the label; it may be a mixture of oils from more than one country.

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Extraction

Olive oil is produced by grinding olives and extracting the oil by mechanical or chemical means. Green olives produce bitter oil, and overripe olives produce rancid oil, so for good extra virgin olive oil care is taken to make sure the olives are perfectly ripened.

  1. First the olives are ground into paste using large millstones (traditional method) or steel drums (modern method).
  2. If ground with mill stones, the olive paste generally stays under the stones for 30–40 minutes. A shorter grinding process may result in a more raw paste that produces less oil and has a less ripe taste, a longer process may increase oxidation of the paste and reduce the flavor. After grinding, the olive paste is spread on fiber disks, which are stacked on top of each other in a column, then placed into the press. Pressure is then applied onto the column to separate the vegetal liquid from the paste. This liquid still contains a significant amount of water. Traditionally the oil was shed from the water by gravity (oil is less dense than water). This very slow separation process has been replaced by centrifugation, which is much faster and more accurate. The centrifuges have one exit for the (heavier) watery part and one for the oil. Olive oil should not contain significant traces of vegetal water as this accelerates the process of organic degeneration by micro organisms. The separation in smaller oil mills is not always perfect, thus sometimes a small watery deposit containing organic particles can be found at the bottom of oil bottles.
  3. In modern steel drum mills the grinding process takes about 20 minutes. After grinding, the paste will then be stirred slowly for another 20–30 minutes in a particular container (malaxation), where the microscopic oil drops unite to bigger drops which facilitates the mechanical extraction. The paste is then pressed by centrifugation, the water is thereafter separated from the oil in a second centrifugation as described before.
    The oil produced by only physical (mechanical) means as described is called virgin oil. Extra virgin olive oil is virgin olive oil that satisfies specific high chemical and organoleptic criteria (low free acidity, no or very little organoleptic defects).
  4. Sometimes the produced oil will be filtered to eliminate remaining solid particles that may reduce the shelf life of the product. Labels may indicate the fact that the oil has not been filtered, suggesting a different taste. Unfiltered fresh olive oil that has a slightly cloudy appearance is called cloudy olive oil. This form of olive that was popular only amongst olive oil small scale producers is now becoming "trendy" in line with consumer's demand for more ecological and less-processed "green" products.

The remaining paste (pomace) still contains a small quantity (about 2-6%) of oil that cannot be extracted by further pressing but only with chemical solvents. This is done in specialised chemical plants, not in the oil mills. The resulting oil is not "virgin" but "pomace oil". The sometimes found term "first press" is technically meaningless as there is no "second" press.
 
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