The production of extra virgin olive oil takes place mainly in an olive mill,a chosen place where the olives are processed and weighed before being turned into oil. The stages of processing can be divided into 5 different steps:

The washing

The olives, once they arrive at the mill and are weighed before undergoing washing, are poured into a loading hopper (a kind of funnel used especially for agricultural products) whose job is to transfer all the olives to the conveyor belt that leads them to the defoliator that separates the olives from the leaves. At this point washing takes place, a very important stage during which the olives are cleaned of all impurities such as mud, twigs, bark, soil.
Once washed, the olives are ready for the second stage of oil production.

Crushing

The second stage involves crushing the olives to obtain a thick, creamy paste with a pungent smell. Crushing makes use of mechanical discs that crush the drupes without causing friction and thus avoid heating the drupes: this avoids initiating oxidation mechanisms (activated by heat) while maintaining the quality of this paste, formed by the olive skin, pulp and kernel. The pressing methods are: continuous cycle in modern mills and discontinuous cycle in traditional mills that use granite millstones that are able to crush the olives due to their weight. In modern mills, on the other hand, mechanical discs are used, which, rotating on the olives, allow them to be crushed and obtain a homogeneous paste in a quick time, thus avoiding oxidation that could deteriorate the final product.
The paste obtained is ready for the third stage: gramolatura.

Gramoling

The paste is transferred to the kneading machine where, thanks to the presence of mechanical arms, it is stirred and gently heated; however, the temperature must never exceed 27/28°C. This phase is the most delicate and important of the entireoil production chain, because at this moment the oil-water emulsions are broken: the oil droplets are released from the water and go to form larger drops of oil that float on the water itself. This rupture takes place inside watertight tanks to protect the oil from oxidation; in addition, the kneading phase must be completed in 30 minutes, otherwise there is a risk of obtaining a product with too high acidity and irreparably compromised organoleptic properties.

Squeezing

Squeezing is the last of the steps leading to the production of oil; it can be done either hot or cold.
In this step, all that is done is to separate the three components that form the paste obtained during gramolatura, namely:

• the oily must
• pomace
• the vegetation water

This separation can occur in two ways:

• with the centrifuge: high-speed rotation causes the separation of these three components due to their different specific weights;
• with filters, equipped with holes called fiscoli, which exert pressure on the gram paste that allows the oily must to escape, separating it from the pomace that remains trapped in the fiscoli instead;

At the end of pressing you get an oil that is already usable, edible although very cloudy. Therefore, to make it clearer and remove residual water and air bubbles from it, it must be passed through the decanter. Once filtered and having allowed the residue to settle to the bottom, the oil is ready to be bottled and then stored.

Storage

It consists of pouring the oil into special containers while protecting it from light and heat sources.