Claudia: We're in Kalamata in the Peloponnese, Greece. This region produces
what is considered to be the finest olive
oil in the world. It's made from this olive
right here, the Koroneiki. It is a very small olive, but also very rich
and aromatic. Thanks to a cold extraction and a slow
fermentation process, Koroneiki olive oil
tastes like no other — a true nectar of the gods. This is the land of ancient
myths and heroes, after all. This olive oil is
considered a very bitter, very spiced olive oil. Very intense,
grassy, fruity, and that is what makes
Koroneiki very special. Like, the aromas of
that and the spiciness, the intense
character it has. Claudia: This region has a
mild Mediterranean climate with extended
periods of sunshine, which makes it the ideal
home for olive groves. Koroneiki olives
are harvested from late October
until late January. The best olive oil
is considered to be the one extracted
from the olives harvested in the
first three weeks, when they're bright green. Early-harvest olive oil
is more nutritious. It is rich in polyphenols
and antioxidants, which make the flavor
fresher and more intense. As the olives ripen, they do
not really get any bigger, but they will get darker. These ripe olives contain
more oil than the green ones and will give a
larger yield, but their oil has
a milder flavor. To preserve the nutrients
inside the Koroneiki olive, the harvest happens
as fast as possible. There are two methods. One is to shake the olives out of the tree with
these electric sticks. Dimitra: See, now they
just brush the olives. The olive fall, and they
do not hurt the tree. Claudia: And it's only
the olives that are ready to fall that
actually come down? They do everything. So basically they go
through the tree. Some of them are more ripe. Some of them are more green. We need them both. We need them both to be
harvested. All of them. Claudia: Ah, this one. Yeah? Whoa! And so I — oh, OK! Need to do this job with
goggles or something. Ah! It's, uh, let's see. Another method is to prune
all the inside branches and then collect the olives with the help of
this machine, which filters
out the leaves. So, the olives
feed inside this. There's olives falling. Be careful, be careful. Claudia: It's
raining olives. Dimitra: Yeah, it's
raining olives. Dimitra: Bravo, like this.
Claudia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. With both methods, the
olives fall into a net, which is made of
breathable material to avoid compressing
the olives. The net is then closed and the more stubborn
branches and leaves are taken out by hand. Dimitra: Like, fast, fast. It's like brushing them. Yes, yes, yes. Claudia: So, how many olives
do you put in one sack? Dimitra: 50 kilos of
olives in one sack. Claudia: Wow. Dimitra: And from that, you
get 10 kilos of olive oil. OK. Scratch the olive. Squeeze it to find
the olive oil inside. Now look, this is
the olive oil. Claudia: Oh, look! It's actually whiter.
Yeah, of course, because it's mixed
with some pulp, yeah. Dimitra: And smell it. Fresh? Nice. Dimitra: This is the fresh
grass that we're looking for in the fresh olive oil.
Exactly that sensation, that you just have cracked
the olive and find the aroma. Claudia: Oh, yeah.
There's so much juice inside the olive itself.
Can we taste it? Dimitra: No, they're
very bitter. They are. They are very bitter. But it's still nice. The Koroneiki olive has
a sister, Kalamata. Both varieties are important for the life of
the olive grove. Dimitra: This is
really good for the pollination
of the trees. Also, think of tradition. People produced what they
needed for the house. So they needed both Kalamata
olives and olive oil. Claudia: Because of
their bitterness, Kalamata olives are not
turned into olive oil. They are instead
used as table olives and go through a
debittering process: They are cured in brine, then vinegar, and then stored in jars
with Koroneiki olive oil. We have more than
2,000 olive trees. Some of them are
1,000 years old. We are very connected
with the olive trees. Every family has 200
trees, 300 trees. It is their olive
oil for the family, even though they
are not farmers. And it's also for
them an extra income. Claudia: Together with
extracting the oil from her family's groves, Dimitra will usually work with local families to
extract their own oil. Her mill is actually paid in
olive oil by these families, as it keeps 8% of
the production. More than 1,000 sacks
arrive every day during peak harvest
at Dimitra's mill. The oil is extracted
within 24 hours. After this machine
blows the leaves out, the olives are washed. This is an important step to remove any soil that
may be in the olives that would give the
oil an earthy taste. There is also a scale
here to weigh the olives and see what percentage of olive
oil is extracted from them. We need to weigh the olives to see how many olives
every family has brought. Usually for the
Koroneiki variety, when it's early
harvest, about 14%. When it's mid-season,
it's about 20%. Claudia: The olives,
including the pits, are ground into a paste. The paste ferments and
spins for a few minutes to bring out the aromas
of the Koroneiki olive. Then the temperature
cools down really fast to be able to
extract the oil. Cold extraction means
that the olive oil is produced with olives
less than 28 degrees. Because otherwise you would
cook, basically, the — Exactly, you'd burn
the olive oil. Claudia: Yeah, yeah. Dimitra: Now we
extract the olive oil. So basically we don't
press the olives. Press is open air. So now, here we don't
want any oxygen. Press is human touch. We don't want that. Claudia: The extraction
of the olive oil happens in this machine
here in just 15 minutes. It works like a big centrifuge
to separate the solids, like the paste, the
pit, and the flesh, from the liquid, which
is our olive oil. The process is very fast. From their arrival, olives
are turned into oil in less than 45 minutes. The liquid gold that comes out
is extra-virgin olive oil, the finest grade in the
family of olive oils. Extra-virgin means that
the cold extraction has preserved all
the antioxidants and polyphenols present
in the Koroneiki olive, like cheese made
with raw milk. Olive oil is also measured by a parameter
called free acidity. For extra-virgin, the free acidity must
be 0.8% or less, meaning than less than 0.8% of the fatty acids normally
present in olive oil have been damaged, either
in production or storage. Extra-virgin olive oil
is more nutritious but also has a shorter shelf
life compared to other grades. We have the liquids, and now we have to
separate the liquids. There is some water that's
naturally inside the olive oil. Again, it's a second
centrifugation. At this time it's vertical. Olive oil is light;
goes on the surface. Water is heavy; goes down. And like this, naturally,
they are separated. Claudia: Olive oil is stored in 300-ton
stainless-steel tanks. When not full, the tanks
are filled with nitrogen. In fact, light, oxygen,
and temperature are the worst enemies
of olive oil. Unlike wine, there is no such
thing as aging in the bottle. Olive oil is only
bottled when needed. Dimitra's mill produces
more than 600 tanks of olive oil every year. This is my office. Your olive mill, yeah. The traditional
olive-oil mill. So, it was in 1904 that the olive-oil
mill started working. And my husband now is the fifth-generation owner
of the olive-oil mill. Claudia: Oh, wow. So this
is how it was originally? Dimitra: This is the family. So this is my father-in-law. In that photo, he's 4. Claudia: He's the small one? Dimitra: Yeah, the small
boys, 4 years old. Now he's 74. OK, you are very lucky, because this is the
early-harvest olive oil harvested 10 days ago. So this is as fresh as
you can get it. OK? This is the
Koroneiki variety. This is from our own
land, family estate. I want you to take
your hand like this. Close it and cover it. And let's roll it a bit. Usually when we taste
the olive oils, we taste them in 28 degrees. This is the perfect
temperature, because you have the
aromas of the olive oil. You feel them. OK? Extra-virgin olive oil has
three characteristics. No. 1 is fruitiness. Fruitiness, you can only
sense it with your nose. And fruitiness has a
scale from 0 to 10 by the national standards. Let's put our nose in. Oh. I could put this on
my bedside table. Fruity, fresh. The Koroneiki variety has the fresh-cut grass
as a characteristic. Yeah. It smells
exactly like that. This is a fruitiness
around 6, 6.5. And then what are the
other two characteristics? Bitter. You feel it here, right and left part
of your tongue. And spicy. You feel it here when
you swallow your olive oil. [sucks in] [sucks in] [Claudia coughs]
[both laugh] Dimitra: That was the spicy! So is that movement you
do, the [sucks in] — The oxygen. Yeah, to sort of
make the olive oil — Dimitra: Breathe, yes,
yes. Claudia: Breathe. So this is when
you want oxygen. Dimitra: Exactly. Claudia:
This is the only time where you need a
little bit of it. Yeah, yeah. You want fresh green mouth. Not to be disturbing.
You're not feeling bad. Good-quality bread,
good-quality olive oil really make me blessed. Make me feel really good. So nice. Well, you are
definitely blessed, to be doing this. I love it. I love it. Dimitra: Messinia is an
endless olive garden, as far as you can see. People of this land
were called helots. Helots means slaves. They were not really slaves,
but they were not fighting. They were producing
the food of the area. That's why Euripides has called
this land as Kallikarpos. Kalli, good. Karpos, seed, fruit. So this is the land
of the good fruit. Claudia: Good seeds. Dimitra: Good
seeds, good fruits. Claudia: Yeah, it is.
