Olives at Aleandri's

Il Frantoio-Biofattoria Aleandri (Olive Oil Press-Biofactory) is a family-owned business that has a rich history of olive oil production but a passion for improving their product and their quality of management. They currently follow biological (organic) practices and learning about their techniques was my favorite part of the day. However, our day began by witnessing the processing and production of olive oil.

One of the first things I learned from our visit to the olive oil press is that the title of “press” is misleading. Gone are the days of physically pressing oil from an olive paste using stacks of disks, modern olive oil presses actually utilize centrifuges that receive the paste after it has already gone through two phases of mixing that encourage the oil separation. The centrifuge works by rapidly forcing the solids to the outside edge of an enclosed cylinder and separating the oil from the solids of the paste. Another fun fact I learned during this part of our tour is that “cold-pressed,” a very hot topic in the health food world, is actually a myth. The process of oil separation has to occur at a low temperature in order to get a quality product, so it is always “cold”. While this was really interesting and new to me, my favorite part was experiencing harvesting and listening to Tiziano talk about how he manages his orchard.

The Aleandri orchard is composed of 2,000 trees and eight different varieties that are native to the region. The orchards are spread out but their area combined totals around 50 hectares. We were able to experience the harvest in an orchard at the crest of a hill looking out over the hills of Le Marche region and it was so breathtaking.

Harvesting is done through a battery powered comb that vibrates the branches to detach the olives. While we only did it one person at a time, there are usually teams of three at a tree in order to have maximum efficiency. Beyond harvesting techniques were Tiziano’s management practices. In order for the trees to create the best quality of olives he creates an open center in his trees in order to allow for maximum light penetration. His passion was so evident as he explained things like dormancy and bud development, that it made his product even more special. It brought me a lot of joy to see how intricately he and his family have developed their system and kept it in such close relation to the land.