Narrator: The world produces
up to 3 million tons
of olive oil per year.
Leading the market are
Mediterranean countries
like Spain, Italy, Greece, and Tunisia.
The reason why olive oil
is so popular there is,
of course, climate, but
it is also the result
of centuries of history,
with the first evidences
recorded as early as 10,000 years ago.
Olives have hundreds of varieties,
called cultivars,
which means their flavors
vary from country to country.
We visited an olive oil mill in Italy
in the southern region of Puglia,
a region that alone
supplies 40% of Italy's
olive oil production and 12% worldwide.
Olive oil is an essential
part of the culture here,
from food to the picturesque landscape.
While the region has
4 million inhabitants,
there are as many as
60 million olive trees,
and some have been there for centuries.
Divided among corporate
and local businesses,
there are over 1,000 olive
mills spread across the region.
To get a true feeling of the territory,
we visited a family-run
mill in the city of Monopoli
where things are still
done the old-fashioned way.
The olive oil produced
here comes from a blend
of local cultivars:
Cima di Mola, Leccina, Olivastra, Simona,
Picholine, Coratina, and Cellina di Nardò.
First, harvested olives enter
the mill on a conveyor belt.
This process gets rid of
about 90% of the leaves,
while the remaining 10%
of the leaves are ground
into paste with olives and pits.
Then, the olives are
pressed at room temperature
using granite wheels,
a method that is called "cold-pressed."
It means that oil was
extracted with no heat,
which would harm its delicate flavor.
The paste then moves
into a kneading machine
that helps break it
down into water and oil.
It's spread over large fiber discs.
The discs are piled up and
placed onto a hydraulic press.
This is where you can start to see oil
and water quite clearly:
the yellow liquid is oil,
while the black is water.
It takes around 2.5 hours
for each pile to be pressed fully.
After which, oil and water
will be separated for good.
The final product is
called unfiltered olive oil
and has a cloudy appearance.
It is then stored in
stainless steel tanks.
It can be sold straight
away, left to mature for one
or several months, or it can be filtered
to remove any excess of
pulp or olive particles.
Filtering is done through
a funnel and cotton wool.
When an oil is cold-pressed,
is made without
the use of chemicals, and is unrefined,
it's called extra-virgin.
This is the highest grade
when it comes to olive oil.
Olive oil is graded by its acidity level.
A high quality extra-virgin
olive oil will have
less than 0.8% acidity.
It's a pure fruit juice after all...
