A special olive oil from Turkey

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Production

During the year olive trees need a lot of cultivation. However, as most groves are situated hillside, the possibility of hydration is very limited. This is why nature basically determines a harvest's richness.

Harvests generally come between November and February, depending largely on weather conditions during the growing season and at harvest. Since olives are delicate, the best oils are made from olives that are picked by hand or by machines that do not beat or bruise the fruit. Picking the tiny olives is labor-intensive and expensive. Workers move through the grove using poles to knock the olives to tarps spread under the tree.

Olives should be crushed within the first 24 or 36 hours of picking. If left to wait, the level of acidity rises, creating olive oil of poor quality. Just before being crushed, the olives need to be run through a washer to eliminate any remaining impurities. Generally the olives are crushed whole into a mash, without prior stoning in oil mills. The mash is put through a centrifugal separator, where the rapid spinning eliminates all remaining water and all of the impurities from the oil.

Thereby evolves the first two quality classes “virgin olive oil extra”, “virgin olive oil” which are described below and one further class “ordinary virgin olive oil”. At this first pressing, you can get from 100 kg olives approximately 20 to 22 liters of olive oil.

“Ordinary virgin olive oil” is unfit for consumption. Either it is refined and mixed with virgin oils from the first two classes (quality class “olive oil”) or it is otherwise used (e.g. for the production of soaps).

Olive-pomace, which is arisen from the first pressing, can be transformed to “olive-pomace oil” by refining and thereafter mixing with virgin oil.

LAMPONİA-olive oils are cold-pressed oils and belong exclusively to the categories “virgin olive oil extra” and “virgin olive oil”. In the area, where LAMPONİA-olive oils are produced, the olive-pomace is not further treated, but dried and used for heating.

 

Quality classes

The different grades of olive oil are identified by the purity and quality criteria laid down in the trade standards of the EC. Basically, four categories need to be distinguished:

Extra virgin olive oil: Superior-category olive oil obtained directly from olives and solely by mechanical means. Extra virgin olive oil has a content of free fatty acids of not more than 0.8 gram per 100 grams.

Virgin olive oil: Olive oil obtained directly from olives and solely by mechanical means. Its content of free fatty acids amounts to not more than 2 gram per 100 grams.

Olive oil: Olive oil composed of refined olive oils mixed with virgins olive oils. This quality of olive oil consists of a blend of refined olive oil and virgin olive oils fit for consumption as they are. It has a free acidity, expressed as oleic acid, of not more than 1 gram per 100 grams.

Olive-pomace oil: Olive-pomace oil is the oil obtained by treating olive pomace with solvents or other physical treatments, to the exclusion of oils obtained by re esterification processes and of any mixture with oils of other kinds. Olive pomace oil comprises a blend of refined olive pomace oil and virgin olive oils fit for consumption as they are. It has a free acidity of not more than 1 gram per 100 grams.

In spite of strict EU directives, some vendors illegally label low quality olive oil as “virgin olive oil”, "olive oil from first-pressing", etc., but use “olive-pomace oil”.  That can be recognized by incredible low prices, which does not even cover the costprice of the supply chain and everybody – from grower to retail – would only suffer losses.

 

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