OLIVE OIL HARVEST

Take a rake, a big stick and a large net - and you’re all set. Olives are still harvested traditionally, by hand, throughout much of Italy. And joining in the harvest gives you the chance to experience a real slice of rural Italian life: a raw, vivid, backbreaking – but wonderfully invigorating, taste of Italy.

The autumn harvest has followed the same pattern for centuries. Workers, friends and family all come together to gather in the crop from the small farms. The olive groves, regimented terraced slopes of shimmering silvery leaved trees, rustling and rippling in the breeze, suddenly swarm with activity. The gnarled trees, their trunks knobbly and scared are old and curmudgeonly, but their branches are laden with young, ripening green fruit.

Timing is crucial – you want to harvest the olives when they are on the brink of turning from green to black to get the best quality oil. Then, once picked, the olives need to be taken to the mill or Frantoio and pressed quickly – usually within 36-48 hours before they start to deteriorate and mould develops on the fruit. The olives are generally harvested in Italy from October to December depending on location: in the cooler north the crop ripens later.

Machinery has been developed to harvest the olives, contraptions which shake the trees so that the fruit falls to the ground where it’s collected in nets, but this is only possible on flat, even land. Olive groves tend to sprawl across rocky, inhospitable hillsides where harvesting manually is the only option. Picking by hand takes time, of course, but the advantage is there’s less bruising to the fruit. Stripping the olives from the branches with a special hand rake can be slightly quicker catching the olives, again, in nets on the ground.

It’s tough, hot work even though the sun is weak and watery, but you get a real feel for they way life has been here for centuries. And a sense of camaraderie as you work together, breaking for a rustic picnic lunch, sitting on the hard earth in the olive grove with your fellow-pickers.

Flavours of Italy offers the opportunity to join in the olive harvest on its trips this autumn with availability on the 22-25 October, 26-29 October, 4-7 November, 11-14 November, and the 18-21 November.

Olive harvest time!

In most Mediterranean areas of Italy, olives are normally harvested in the months of November, December and January. But in Tuscany, where cooler valleys are sometimes hit by early frosts, the harvest can begin as early as the end of September.

This early harvest means that the fruit is less ripe when it comes off the vine producing less oil, making Tuscan olive oils a bit more hard to come by than others. The less ripe olives also account for the prized peppery taste of olive oil from Tuscany. This autumnal harvest time is one of the best seasons to visit Tuscany – there are even parties thrown to honour it!

Olives are to this day picked by hand, and they are combed from the tree branches with a long instrument that resembles a giant pair of scissors. This old method, known as Brucatura, provides the best fruit as machines tend to bruise the fruit which has a direct impact on the taste. In Tuscany, the olives are always picked by hand, for proud Tuscans it would be a crime even to use one sub-standard Olive as this can effect the taste of the whole barrel!

As you can imagine, olive harvesting is difficult work. Usually, the entire family, and often their friends, are called upon to pitch in with the farm workers for the harvest. The olives are always picked when green and timing is hugely important. Once the fruit is off the trees, it must be rushed to the press in order to avoid the fruit spoiling. Fermentation becomes an issue once the olives are picked. So, it is on to the presses as quickly as possible.

Each olive is about 20 percent oil, so it takes a huge number of olives to produce a litre of oil – normally about 200! However, with the finer and more expensive oils, it sometimes takes the fruit of an entire tree to produce a litre.

In Tuscany, as in most of Italy, the olives are pressed at a communal mill which is called a Frantoio. At the frantoio, many growers bring their olives to be pressed, but each grower is proud of his olives and comes along with them to the mill, to be sure that only his harvest goes into the pressing. A centuries old tradition still very much alive and well in rural Tuscany!
Flavours offer Italian cooking holidays at two venues in Tuscany, Villa Maria (close to Florence) and Villa Segalato (close to Lucca). Flavours also offer Pilates and Painting holidays in Tuscany.

For more details visit www.flavoursholidays.co.uk