Oil

    …here we disclose the secret for recognizing
    a quality extra-virgin oil,
    a squeeze of fresh
    and healthy olives… 

    Welcome to Giffoni Sei Casali!
    Have a good time discovering landscapes and places that change colors, sounds, smells and tastes with the changing of seasons.
    It is spring, and the green of our hills appears to us splendid and intense, separated in bands of color that go from green to the silvery grey of the lanceolate and leathery leaves of olive trees.
    In autumn, the evergreen olive tree is loaded with the little fruits of ” Rotondella” ready for the harvest, round and pulpy fruits full of their precious fluid: oil.
    Winter is near now; the leaves are all on the ground and they carpet the road with color.
    “Rotondella” is the most diffuse variety of olive in theprovinceofSalerno. It owes its name to its characteristic spherical shape; it was introduced inCampaniaaround year 540 B.C. The production of oil in Giffoni Sei Casali is an ancient job, rich of knowledge stratified during centuries.
    The soils of the commune are included in the territory of the “Salerno Hills DOP” and are witnesses of a century-old production of oil, made by the ancient stone mills and from ultra-centenary trees.

    The first element to obtain quality oil is the harvest. The degree of ripeness of the olives is the factor that mostly influences organoleptic and nutritional qualities of oil. Before harvesting the olives it is essential to evaluate their degree of darkening (invaiatura, that is the change of color of the fruits that turn from green to purplish and that must be around 60%.In this phase of their ripening olives contain maximum concentration of oil and phenolic substances, which are responsible for the organoleptic and nutritional qualities of the oil.

    After the harvest, olives are taken to the oil mill in big plastic cases. There they are weighted and the first phase of production starts with washing and ventilation to remove leaves and impurity. Next phase is crushing – or mechanical milling – of the fruits that can be done by a cylinder oil mill with mullers or hammers, or by toothed disks.
    Afterward the olive paste passes to the delicate phase of scutching (about 30 minutes at a temperature of max 30-35°C) that consists in stirring the olive paste in order to facilitate aggregation of the oil in drops of such dimensions to allow their following extraction.
    By extraction the liquid part (water and oil) is separated by the solid residuals (sansa).
    The final process is separation, obtained by means of a vertical axle centrifuge, by which the oil is separated from the residual water.

    The smell of fresh grass just mowed, of the earth warmed by the summer sun, of the earth wet by the rain, of the new oil just milled….

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