Olive picking 1st novembre 2011

Olivey goodness, 1st novembre 2011

It's been a good few days. I managed to find what looks like a really good tai chi in Siena, played poker, watched Siena win 4-1 at footy, had a great fancy dress Halloween party and went olive picking. Olives are the second life blood of this region. The first is wine, the second olives. Here the olives are small and so they are only used for oil. When they are ready there is frenetic manual activity. This year it started in the last week of October. We had gone to a great fancy dress party on Halloween and had been invited to help with olive picking the day after, 1st November 2011, which also happened to be a national holiday. Well, it didn't quite go to plan.

For Halloween I was going to go as Spiderman, as usual, but Dawn went as a Geisha, so I decided to put on one of my judo suits, and take some sei and a big samurai sword. Party was winding down after lots of booze, rockband and xbox kinect at about 3am. True to Siena form it proved impossible to get a taxi. The party was out in the sticks, maybe 10 miles outside Siena. Sienese people do not get taxis. They think it is weird when I take one rather than getting someone to pick me up, or drive pissed. Mind you they don't drink like I do! In somma, we did not get a taxi and stayed over. The next morning we were supposed to head for olive picking around 08:30 but we were woken up at 08:30 by a call, still in bed in the wrong house. I ordered a taxi, which amazingly turned up in 2 minutes, and we did the walk of shame - me with some serious weapons and both of us looking like tools.

Quick wash and brush later and we were on our way to Chiusi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiusi
about an hour south, near to Montalcino, home of the famous Brunello wine. We got there and got stuck in. A work colleague has a beautiful house and farm at the end of a white road, with hundreds of olive trees. Picking is simple - hand work mainly, with some magic massive fork that connects to a car battery to speed it up. I was told that the oil comes mainly from the stones by the old grandpappy of the family. I'm not sure if I understood correctly but I understand the crushing process is pretty intense. To catch the olives, they spread out muslin nets under the trees and you just run your hands down the branches and drop the olives on to the muslin. When the tree is done the muslin is gathered up and the olives dumped into a breathable box. The olives should be taken for crushing within 24-48 hours - after that oxidation sets in and the oil can go rancid.
At lunch we had an amazing really Italian meal - spaghetti with ragu and pancetta, spaghetti with fried bread, mushroom lasagne thing, roasted chicken, potatoes, fruit loaf, and sweet chestnuts, all washed down with loads of local wine. The food was amazing and I was sat next to the grandpappy and had some absolutely fantastic banter with him which was great fun. Also shows that my Italian is improving a little too.
To make the liquid gold (as it was called by Homer) they take the baskets down to the local crusher and rent the time so that the olives can be crushed and get the oil straight there and then. In fact, at lunch they had some fresh stuff from yesterday. I made to drink it fresh, as I had done several times at restaurants in Siena, including being served it in a glass at a Michelin-starred restaurant near Siena, but the Italians from Chiusi nearly freaked - more examples of the regionailty of the food.
All in all it was a fantastic day out and a fantastic experience to pick the olives with a real Italian family - I loved it. The weather was great too, pretty hot considering it was novembre.
Here on our farm where we live they pick the olives too for crushing, My next door neighbour says that it takes about 100 kg olives to make 1 litre of the first pressing, and when he sees cheap olive oil in the shops he cannot believe, knowing full well what the man labour is like. And from what I saw it was tremendous.

Happy oiling people!