How and when do we harvest?

The preparation

Our delicious olive oil is a process of more than one year. In early spring when the olive trees are in bloom, it is time for the first pruning. We cut away the useless branches. These are the branches without flowers and the branches of which the flowers are not bisexual. In late spring we prune a second time. Now we are removing small branches that hold back the sunlight too much. And a third pruning in the summer. Then the shoots around the trunk are removed.

At the end of November, after our olives have enjoyed the warm, hot Spanish summer sun, they are ready for harvesting. The olives have evolved from green to light purple to almost black. Throughout the summer we have manually removed the weeds and our orchard is ready to harvest.

Harvesting the olives

We lay nets under the trees and with long sticks we hit the branches. The olives fall into the nets. The lower branches are picked by hand. It is hard and heavy work.
The nets are rolled togheter and we admire the new harvest. We collect the olives in tubs and on the spot we sieve the olives so that no twigs and leaves will be pressed with them. The olives are pressed at the same evening.

The pressing of the olives

We do not press ourselves. But we are lucky that our neighbor, Ximo Ribes, has the very latest olive oil presses and infrastrucure. Each olive type is pressed separately. And only the first cold pressing goes in a special stainless steel container. There the oil will relax. We do not filter our olive oil, but unwanted substances sink into the containers. The little moisture also drops, because oil is lighter than water. This way we obtain a nice  and clear olive oil.

Blending the olive oils

And then it's up to us again. We determine the taste before bottling. We determine which oil of the different olive varieties we mix and in which proportion. Once this is done, the olive oil goes in 5 liter bottles or in the beautiful metal packaging of 500 or 250 ml.

Ready for you to enjoy!