April 27, 2025 - Greece
Olive Oil Mill
They give a free tour, then hope you will buy some stuff at their store. Which we did, of course. That's our tour guide on the right. She spoke perfect english. The Olive Oil Mill is family run and I believe our tour guide is the wife of the owner.
She is showing us the equipment used back in the olden days to process the olives. Basically, the idea is to separate the oil from the other fruit contents (vegetative extract liquid and solid material).
Initially, the olives were crushed with big grinding stones like this. The liquid flows off the side to the left into a wood box.
Lynnette and Jenny are fascinated.
An olive press works by applying pressure to olive paste to separate the liquid oil and vegetation water from the solid material. The oil and vegetation water are then separated by standard decantation.
This machine consists of two big iron presses. The liquid oil and vegetation water flows into those bins where eventually the less dense olive oil is skimmed off the top.
That press looks pretty powerful.
Now we get to the new stuff. We went inside the building where the new, modern equipment is. The way it works is that a farmer brings his olive crop to this place. The olives are processed and after an hour or so, the farmer leaves with his olive oil. The mill keeps a percentage for payment.
Our guide explained what all these machines do but I can't remember.
"The olive oil in this bottle is excellent."
On the left are pictures from the early days of the family business.
"How much do you think they are going to buy?"
"A lot."
"Yeah."
Group shot with the tour guide.
The tour took less than an hour and was very interesting. When in Greece, you must learn about olive oil. Glad we stopped!
