Let it flow

A few months ago, I discovered an olive mill near Beziers.  Domaine Pradines le Bas is just a few kilometers from Beziers town centre, in the direction of Murviel-les-Beziers.  Francine Buesa has been planting olive trees on the estate for more than 15 years, and her trees are now in full production.

Olive grove at Domaine Pradines le Bas

I visited again last week to watch olive oil being pressed.  The olive harvest starts as early as at the end of August, when the olives destined for the table are being picked.  The harvest can continue into January.  Once the table olives are picked, the rest of the harvested olives are being processed for oil.  Green, purple and black olives come from the same tree, but are at different stages of ripeness.  As olives ripen, their oil content starts to increase.

Olives ready for pressing

At Pradines le Bas, the table olives are picked by hand, whereas the olives destined for olive oil are harvested mechanically.  A special harvesting machine is used – the machine spreads what looks like a giant upturned umbrella underneath the tree, and then gently vibrates the tree, shaking off the ripe olives.  The upturned umbrella catches them all!  The olives are then loaded into large crates and taken to the mill for processing.  Here’s a picture of the machine:

Olive harvesting machine

At the mill, the olives are loaded into a machine which separates the leaves from the olives, and washes the olives.

Starting the milling process

Starting the milling process – the cleaning machine

The black box on top of the machine takes care of the leaves, a bit like a giant vacuum cleaner, whilst the ‘washing machine’ is below.  Once the olives are washed, they are transported to the room next door.  Stepping into the room next door was great!  There was a wonderful scent in the air – difficult to describe – somewhat herby but definitely smelling of olive oil.

From the hopper, an Archimedes screw takes the olives to the mill unit, where they are pulped, stone and all!

Arrival of the cleaned olives

The olive pulp then goes into a malaxer, a machine, which slowly mixes the olive pulp for up to 45 minutes.  This mixing helps the extraction process later on.

Malaxer with the lid closed, to avoid oxidization

Here’s a video for you – unfortunately you don’t get the smell, but you’ll get an idea of the noise!! 🙂  (Note: e-mail subscribers, you may have to visit the website in order to be able to watch the video)

The olive pulp being mixed.

From the malaxer, the pulp gets pumped into the extractor, where the pulp is spun to separate the liquid from the solids.  The solids end up next door and are later spread out in the olive groves, nothing is wasted!

Extracting the juice from the olive pulp.

The yellowish olive juice runs through a sieve into a container, from where it is pumped to a centrifuge.

Olive juice!

The centrifuge separates the water from the oil.  The golden coloured olive oil runs from the spout in a thin but steady stream!

Freshly pressed olive oil

When freshly pressed, the olive oil has a cloudy appearance.  The oil is unfiltered, so tiny particles of olive pulp are still in suspension.

The pressing plant

Once pressed, the oil is transferred to stainless steel tanks, where, over time, the particles slowly drop to the bottom, leaving the oil perfectly clear and sparkling!

Over 900 litres of olive oil!!

The bottom of the stainless steel tanks are v-shaped, and that’s where the solids collect.  A tap at the bottom of the tank allows the solids to be drawn off.  That part is sent to a soap factory for processing into soaps and cosmetics.

Stainless steel storage tank

The oil is now ready to be bottled and sold!  The shop is right next door to the mill.  Large windows in the shop allow the visitors to see the equipment throughout the year.

In the shop you can find a variety of olive oils (you can taste them all!), tapenades, table olives and cosmetic products, as well as a selection of products from partners (vinegars, jams, etc.).  You can also buy via the on-line shop, but nothing beats tasting the oils before you buy!  When you buy olive oil, bear in mind that up to 10 kilos of olives are used to make a litre of olive oil.  At Pradines le Bas, all olive oil is cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil.

Making olive oil is not the only activity at Pradines le Bas.  Up the stairs from the olive mill is a gallery for contemporary art.  Don’t miss it if you visit – the exhibitions change on a regular basis, and are always worth a look!!

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Milling around..

Last weekend was the European Mills Weekend.  Each year the whole of Europe celebrates its milling heritage on the third weekend of May, with demonstrations of the millers craft, and buildings being opened to the public which are often not accessible for the rest of the year.  Once upon a time there were lots of mills in Languedoc; St Chinian alone had in excess of 10 water powered wheels and one windmill.  I visited Roquebrun on the Sunday, and the St Chinian windmill on the Monday, and since I don’t want to make this post overly long I will split it into two.

I’ll start in chronological order with Roquebrun.  Until 1870, when the bridge across the Orb was completed, Roquebrun was somewhat cut off from the rest of the plain by the river.  On the carte de l’etat major a map from between 1820 – 1866 the road to Beziers led via Causses et Veyran and it was probably no more than a track.  There was a ferryman at Roquebrun, so that the arable land on the other side of the river could be accessed, but that was it.  The village was more or less self-sufficient, and the mills played an important role.

The first mill I visited was an oil mill, which was in operation until the 1920s.  Waterpower was provided by the stream from Laurenque, and the mill consisted of a crushing mill to reduce the olives to pulp, and a press to extract the oil.  In the 1920s the oil mill transferred to a location on the edge of village, now the site of the cooperative winery.  In the old days every possible spot of land was cultivated, and olive trees provided families with their supply of oil for the year.

Across from the oil mill stand the other two mills: on the edge of the river is the grain mill, which ground the locally grown cereals into flour or cattle feed. The inside of the mill can be visited, and usually houses exhibitions of local artists.

At the entrance level there is a reproduction mill,  and on the next floor the beautiful roof timbers are visible.  The wheel room can be accessed from the outside, and the entrance to the mill-race is still visible from the banks. The old mill stone is now outside, propped up against a wall.

Next over and now surrounded by water is the moulin a genet, a mill which was used to process plant fibre extracted from the spanish broom which grows abundantly on the hillsides.  At one point this mill could be reached on foot, but a change in the river bed on the opposite side has meant that there is now water all round it.  In case you are wondering, the round structure atop of the building was a pigeonnier, providing meat for the table.  The broom fibre was used to make sheets and sacking and produced a somewhat coarse fabric.  A lot of houses had their own looms, and the open loggias at the top of a number buildings indicate that this is where the drying of the fibres and weaving was carried out.

The mills look a little like stranded ships, the pointed bows have helped them withstand the floodwaters of the Orb river for centuries.  The dam which fed both mills used to be made with bunches of twigs, and was replaced in the 1960s with a new dam made of concrete.  It’s due for a major refurbishment shortly.  Both of the water mills fell into disuse at the end of 19th century, when the villagers no longer relied on self-sufficiency.

As part of the mill weekend in Roquebrun a guided visit of the Jardins de Limpach was on the program.  We were met by the president of the association Patrimoine et mémoire de nostre pais, which researches and promotes the history and heritage of the village.  Our visit started just a few yards down from the mills, and took us along the Laurenque stream, to the site of the first gardens in Roquebrun.  This area of France was occupied by the Moors from the 4th to 7th centuries, and the Moors brought with them a certain amount of know how where irrigation was concerned.  The water was captured in a canal further up the valley, and each garden along the valley had a beal, a channel made of stones, which in turn filled up a basin called a tane.  From the tane the water was distributed on to the ground with the aid of a large and slightly curved paddle, more of a large soup spoon perhaps.

Other systems existed to get water into the gardens, where the ground was too high to be fed by the stream.  Along the valley are cisterns, into which the water would flow.

Some of them are barely visible, but others still seem to be in good repair and use.  To get the water out of the cisterns there were various methods.  One was something called chaine a godet, literally translated as a bucket chain, which was hand-cranked.  For larger amounts of water there was also the noria, which worked on a similar principle as the chaine a godet, but was operated by a donkey.

But the most common and probably least expensive was the chadouff (or shadoof), which is called pousalanque in Occitan and which involved a stone pillar, a slender tree trunk, some stones and a bucket.  Examples of this can be seen today in India, Egypt and elsewhere.  There are many stone pillars left in the jardins de Limpach but only one which is more or less working at the end of the walk.

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The bucket hangs on a chain, and is lowered into the water by pulling the chain downwards to lower the arm.  The counterweight at the end of the arm helps pull the full bucket up without much effort, and the water is then emptied into a channel, which spills into a tane, from where it is splashed ont the surrounding crops.  At the top of the valley there was also the fontaine intermittante – a spring which overflows at certain times.  In the days before running water, the women of the village used to come here with their pitchers to get water and no doubt have a chat.  Later the water was pumped up to a reservoir at the top of the hill, from where it fed a number of fountains.

I followed the path the women would have taken for centuries, and it looked as might have when they did.  I couldn’t resist the Iris which were flowering along the way.

Looking into some fo the gardens there are series of stone pillars, some of them connected by iron hoops.  According to our guide, the first orange trees were planted in this valley, and the structures were orangeries, which could be covered in winter to protect against frost.

After that interesting visit I went for a little walk around Roquebrun, there’s a lot more to see and of course there is the jardin mediterranean to visit at the top of the hill, but that’s for another blog.

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Now for two last pictures!  The giant asparagus is the beginning of an agave flower stalk, and the pale blue patch in the distance is a field of blue iris.

Green gold, a brief story of olive oil (and olives)

At the start of the first post of the new year, I would like to wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2013!!

While writing this post I’ve been wondering why olive oil is called green gold or liquid gold.  Perhaps because of its colour, or because of its virtues?  I cannot imagine cooking without olive oil, and although I use other oils in cooking, the bulk of what I use is made from olives.  Perhaps you’re asking yourself “why is he writing about olives now?”; the reason is that we’re in the middle of olive oil production season in Languedoc.  Olive trees flower from mid may to early june, and the flowers are wind-pollinated.  That means that the pollinators have to be planted in just the right position within the olive grove, so that the prevailing wind blows the pollen onto the flowers.

About 5% of the flowers turn into olives, and they grow and swell throughout the summer.  From September onwards green olives can be picked and be turned into table olives.

As time progresses the olives ripen and change colour, from violet to purple to a deep black.

At any of those stages they can be turned into table olives, but for oil only the ripe olives are used as the oil content increases during the ripening phase, The olive harvest continues until the end of January, by which time most of the trees will have been emptied, and what’s left will be eaten by the birds.

I have two olive mills in easy reach.  The smaller is in Puisserguier and called Lo Moulinet (Occitan for small mill), and the larger is in Cabezac, near Bize Minervois and called L’Oulibo. Both can be visited for tasting and they sell direct to the public.  If you compare the two, Lo Moulinet is David and L’Oulibo is Goliath, but that’s just for size, I cannot detect any antagonism between the two. The two operations are on very different scales from one another, and where Lo Moulinet has a small production of oils and table olives, L’Oulibo is a large cooperative of over 1700 growers in three departements.

To pick olives for turning into olive oil big nets are spread out underneath the trees, and the olives are then “raked” off the trees using either specially adapted rakes or vibrating beaters.  The nets are then gathered up and the olives put into crates and off they go to the mill.

As they arrive at the mill, the crates are weighed, assessed and recorded, and then the olives are processed.  First a machine takes out any leaves and other debris,  then they are washed to remove any dust and dirt, and finally they reach the mill proper.

At L’Oulibo they have a giant stone mill with two mill stones weighing 1.5 tonnes each.  During the Christmas open days (this year December 22 to January 4) the stone mill is used to crush the olives (including pits) to a pulp.

At other times a modern hammer mill is used for that purpose.  The pits contain enzymes which help with the conservation of the oil.  The paste is then put in a special mixer, where it is gently warmed (below 27 centigrade) and mixed for 30 to 40 minutes to prepare for the oil extraction.  Pressing is done in a continuous process in a horizontal centrifugal press at L’Oulibo, and in some places (such as Lo Moulinet) using a traditional press, where the paste is spread on discs which are stacked and hydraulically pressed.  The resulting liquid contains both water and oil, and is processed by a separator, which produces a lovely golden oil.

This oil can now be filtered or left to settle and afterwards decanted – both methods produce beautifully clear and sparkling extra virgin oil.

Both of the mills produce varietal oils, using the traditional olive varieties of the region:  Lucques, Picholine, Bouteillan (both), Olivier’s and Aglandau (L’Oulibo only).  The flavours vary greatly from one oil to the other, some being smooth and buttery and others spicy and peppery.  Go and taste, you’ll be surprised just how much difference there is!

The picking of green table olives has to be done carefully and by hand to avoid bruising the fruit – any bruises will turn black and unsightly.  Have you ever bitten into an olive straight from the tree?  No?  Well, you’ll never taste anything as bitter and horrid again – one of the compounds responsible for that taste is called oleuropein.  In order to remove the bitter taste green olives are processed most commonly using lye, which is then soaked out again using several changes of water.  Producing top quality table olives is a skill, and the commercial producers guard their recipes jealously.  Once the olives had the bitterness removed they are brined, and in some cases flavoured and sterilised. At L’Oulibo the new harvest Lucques olives are sold having only undergone flash pasteurisation – a real treat!  These olives are a bright green and crunchy with an incomparable flavour!  I’m almost 100%  certain that you’ll like them!  Black table olives are easier to process as the bitterness has reduced during the ripening process.  Most of the time they are simply salted to remove the bitter compounds, then packed in brine or oil, flavoured or not.  If you’ve not already visited either L’Oulibo or Lo Moulinet, you should definitely add them to your list of places to visit for your next holiday in Languedoc!