What is twisted, knotty, with us and beautiful? What can fuel provide to protect you from the winter cold, shade to soothe the summer heat, salad dressing, wound conditioner, and even light for the dark of night? The answer is the robust old olive tree that experts call "Olea europaea".
The cultivated olive tree has abundant foliage, formed by long and narrow leaves, with a light green face and a greenish-gray underside. The olive groves of Andalusia in southern Spain stretch for miles, row after row of manicured trees. When the wind blows, the double color of the leaves creates a pleasant sparkling effect.
Some olive trees have strange shapes. The logs appear to be intertwined and twisted, creating the impression of fighters caught in a fight or snakes wriggling and leaving a nest. Of course, it takes many years. But the olive tree is in no hurry.
It can take up to 50 years for one of these trees to reach the highest olive production. Many in the peninsula of Spain are over 400 years old. In Syria, Palestine, and Tunisia, some basic tribes lived for more than 1000 years. The Spanish island of Mallorca in the Balearic Islands is also known for its hundred-year-old olive trees of enormous size and infinite variety of shapes. Depending on the viewer's imagination, the tree trunks appear to take different shapes.
Nothing is lost in the olive tree. Its leaves serve as food for animals, its wooden roots and its wood, even if it is twisted and twisted, can be ground into a beautiful tall amber with a grain. The main product is, of course, olive oil, which has supplied olive oil to humans for thousands of years.
Olive oil is available in different sizes, depending on whether it is round or oval, with a diameter of one to four centimeters (0.4 to 1.5 inches). Olives also come in different colors. Some are green, some are black, and some are different shades of red. Because the difference? In fact, most varieties go through the green phase first and then go from reddish purple to black when they are really ripe. Therefore, the color depends on when the berries are picked; and it obviously affects the taste and oil content.
When traveling to an area where olive trees grow, don't be tempted to grab an olive tree from a tree and eat it. If you do, you will get a bitter surprise, as the olives are not really edible until they have been processed.
To neutralize this bitter taste, the olives are dipped in a dilute alkaline solution (caustic soda, sodium hydroxide) that can penetrate about two-thirds of the olive mass and leave only a trace of bitterness around the pit for flavor. After draining the bleach solution, cover the olives with water, which is replaced several times in a day or two to remove most of the bleach. Here in Spain they are transferred to 680-liter saline tanks, where they remain from one to six months. The final product is stored with saline solution in sealed jars or small plastic bags for sale to the public. Larger quantities are placed in metal drums and containers for export and sale in shops, bars, hotels and restaurants.
How to obtain olive oil
The most important product of the olive is its oil, highly valued by man for thousands of years. How is it obtained and what is it used for?
The most tedious part of the harvesting process is the harvesting of olives from the trees. There are two ways to do this. The slowest method is manual harvesting, which guarantees better oil quality, while the most popular method is retail, that is, cutting branches with long stems to loosen the fruits in a thin or plastic net under the tree. They are black and ripe, they have their maximum oil content, which can vary between 20 and 30% by weight of fresh fruit.
After harvesting, the olives are washed and then sent to the mill for crushing. The resulting mass is transferred to a hydraulic press that extracts the vital oil. It contains pollutants and foreign objects that seep through a series of sedimentary tanks. Today, in well-equipped factories, much of this process is accelerated through the use of modern machines, such as centrifugal separators. The end product is an excellent olive oil.