Le Cerque and Le Cerque dell’Est
oliodop@lecerque.com - bedandbreakfast@lecerque.com
That’s worth knowing! (first
part of 3) · The only
fats produced using exclusively physical processes are those obtained from olives and from walnuts (walnut
oil is a french specialty). ·
After the olives have been
milled, the result is a paste. There are three physical technologies
for obtaining the olive oil from the paste: the oil press, the
centrifugation, the percolation. In the the first case the paste must be
very dense and sometime that requires addig the “sansa” (the chopped
residual olive seeds); in contrast,
in the other techologies the paste must be soft ant water must be
added. Before centrifugation or percolation, the paste must be stirred for
about half an hour (“gramolazione”
): in that phase, hot water circulates in the wall of the gramola, but in a
modern mill the temperature of the paste inside of the gramola is less then
30°C. ·
The sentence “Olio
Vergine – o Extra Vergine - di Oliva” means that the process used for
obtaining the product is a physical process ·
Maybe you didn’t know that all
the other vegetable oils (e.g. they derived from corn, soy beans, peanut, sunflower,
etc.) are obtained using a chemical process for estracting them, because
the milled paste contains too few fat or is too bitter or has an awful
taste. In these case other chemical substances (solvents) are added, in
order they mix toghether with the vegetable oil and not with the parts to
be eliminated. Afterthat, the solvents are evaporated. At the end of that
process, vitamins and vegetable
colours like chlorophyl are added, beacuse the original ones disappeared.
·
A
Law of the Europen Community states the classification of the virgin
olive oils:
“Extra Vergine”, “Vergine”, "Vergine corrente" or
"Vergine Lampante", depending on the results of the “panel test”
(organoleptic properties) and of a
lot of analysis. The extra virgin olive oil must be judged as “senza
difetti” (without defects) in the Panel test.
