The Benefits of Olive Oil

Olive oil is being used, above all, in cooking – mainly as extra-virgin – as salad dressing, to flavour the food, to pot different types of food and, since it is characterised by a very high smoke point, it is commonly used to prepare tasty fried food.
Olive oil is the only nourishment derived from drupe, a fruit borne from the transformation of the olive flowers, “mignole”.
The most ancient findings attest that olive oil trees originated from the region that is today’s Syria and Palestine, from where it spread to the entire Mediterranean basin. They reached Italy around 1000 B.C.
In the last fifty centuries, olive oil is being obtained solely from the pressing of ground olives, separating the oil from the water present in the olive.
The traditional techique of harvesting and olive picking is still based on the use of poles to beat fronds, forcing the fruit to fall onto the ground. Nowadays, ancient sticks are replaced by mechanical poles that damage less branches and make olives fall into the nets that are fixed beneath the canopy. This method of harvesting olive is obviously more time efficient and hygienic.
In some areas of the southern and central Italy, techniques of combing olives keeping them in sacks over shoulders and of tall ladder still remain, having the advantage of picking olives in a more selective way, especially those “for preservation”, in the most favourable moment of the maturation.
It is very important to preserve olives inside the well ventilated crates, far away from the heat and to press them not more than 18-24 hours after the harvest, in order to avoid the formation of “aliphatic alcohols” that would produce heat and mould.