Category: Oils

El Extra virgin olive oil is a 100% natural juice that preserves the aroma, flavour, vitamins and all the properties of the olive, and is the only vegetable oil that can be consumed exactly as it is obtained.
It comes directly from olives by extracting their juice, although the process is a little more complex than squeezing an orange.
When the olives arrive at the mill, they are first cleaned to remove impurities such as leaves and small twigs collected with the fruit. Once clean, the olives are ready for milling, a process that essentially consists of four stages. Throughout the process, both the olives and the oil remain in contact only with inert material (stainless steel) to prevent any alteration.
The first step is milling. The olives are crushed in a mill to break the cell structures that contain the oil. It is essentially like blending olives in a kitchen blender, only on a much larger scale. The result is an olive paste made up of crushed olives, pieces of stone and skin, oil and vegetation water.
The next step is malaxation. The olive paste is mixed thoroughly to homogenise it and help the tiny droplets of oil combine into progressively larger drops. The mixing time should not exceed 90 minutes and the paste temperature should remain below 27–28 °C. The paste then moves on to centrifugation. In a decanter, it is spun at high speed so its components separate according to density. Three concentric layers form inside the cylindrical drum: pomace, made up of the dry olive matter, stone and skin with some moisture, forms the outer layer; vegetation water forms the middle layer; and the oil, with a density of about 0.92 g/ml, forms the inner layer. The final stage is filtration. Different mills use different systems to remove the last impurities, including vertical centrifuges, settling tanks and stainless-steel mesh filters. Once moisture and impurities have been removed, our Extra virgin olive oil is ready to be transferred to the storage tanks before bottling.