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...