"Olea prima omnium arborum est" (Columella)

Olive oil is extracted from the pulp of the olive, the fruit of the "Olea europea", a Mediterranean tree that is cultivated in most of the central and coastal areas of southern Italy and in Liguria.
In its wild state (olea sylvestris) the tree is quite thorny, but the cultivated species (olea europae or olea sativa), which is a derivation, has no such deterrents.
The tree has been grown in many different countries for thousands of years and there are many different types, the names of which vary from region to region.
Of all these, there are two which are decidedly superior to the others. These are the "pendolina" and the "taggiasca", both of which are common to the Italian Riviera and the Oneglia valley.

The "taggiasca" type is a vigorous plant which grows quite high.
It has a firm pyramidic shape with a large trunk, a thick forest of twigs, dark green, spear-shaped leaves and large, oval, blue-black olives with a fine skin and fleshly pulp, distributed evenly over the branches.
The tree grows to a considerable size and can live for over a hundred years.
It produces a large quantity of olives and its extremely fine oil has a sweet, exquisite aroma, much appreciated by gourmets.

Olives are an oval fruit that can grow up to three centimeters long.
They are covered with a fine green-brown skin and contain a dark green, oily pulp and a hard woody stone that contains the seed which is also oily.
The ripened fruit, when it is at its peak of freshness, contains 70/80 per cent pulp.
The rest is skin, stone and seed.

The first shoots begin to appear in early spring and the "mignole" or buds appear between April and June depending on the climate and the year.
The most abundant and highest quality crops start to bud in April because this means that the small olive will absorb the rays of the suns as soon as the weather changes and it begins to get hot.
There is an old proverb which says "If the buds appear in April, prepare a cask, if the buds appear in May, prepare a sample and if the buds appear in June prepare your fist."
Therefore, there are many different types of olive and many different factors that determine the quality of the oil.
The first is the point of ripening at which the olives are picked, then there is the method used to harvest them, there is the way in which they are pressed and lastly there are the diseases that can develop on the tree or on the fruit.
Olives begin to ripen in autumn and the fruit can be picked even as late as the following spring.
To obtain a high quality oil, the olives must be pressed not later than three or four days after they are picked: "Chi macina fresco macina franco!" (An early pressing is a sincere one!")

For an olive tree to prosper and grow, the following are needed: open spaces that never freeze over, hills that are exposed to the sun, protected from northern winds and fog and set within a latitudinal strip of roughly 35 and 45 degrees above the equator.
The Italian Riviera is particularly favored as all these requisites are true and thanks to the painstaking labor of our forefathers, it is full of splendid trees.
Of particular note are the rolling hills and rich valleys of the Oneglia region, where the olive groves beat all rivals in terms of beauty, shape, harvest and quality.

"...Oneglia, altrice Nel fertil suolo di palladj ulivi…" (dall'Ode "La Laurea" di Giuseppe Parini)

Since ancient times, oil has been extracted from olives by crushing and pressing and these processes have included a series of different machines, driven in a series of ways including horse and water power.
The press is a crucial, perhaps the most crucial, process in oil production.

The way in which the olives are harvested has an immense influence on the quality of the oil produced.
There are various ways of harvesting olives. One is to clear the area under the tree, spread nets over it, climb into the tree and shake the fruit off the branches into the net below (spiccatura); another method is to beat the branches with rods (abbacchiatura) so that the fruit falls to the ground and often after a gale or because they have become overripe, the olives fall to the ground and are simply picked up.
The best method is known as the "Bracatura" system where the olives are picked from the trees by hand. When olives are picked by hand, they are clean, healthy and selected individually. They are therefore more likely to keep better and produce higher quality oil.
Moreover, this way the trees are not damaged.

a) Transport:
Olives should be transported in baskets or on mats so as not to damage the fruit. When the olives reach the press, they are washed to remove any particles of dirt and cleared of twigs, leaves or any olives that are below standard.
b) Pressing process:
The pressing process crushes the tissues of the fruit and presses out the liquid contained in it.
The olives must be crushed slowly using pressing cylinders.
To obtain a high quality oil, the olives should be pressed not later than three or four days after they are picked.

In Liguria the olive harvest and oil production begins in the autumn and continues, without interruption, right through to the spring.
During the colder months, when the Alps and the Apennines are covered with a white mantle of snow, the enchanting Italian Riviera continues to flower and thanks to the sun and the mild climate, winter is really only an anticipation of spring.
In the olive groves, the crop is harvested in an atmosphere of festive joy.
Along the roads that wind over the olive covered hills, you can often hear beautiful melodies sung to animate the job of harvesting, a task usually carried out by women and girls.
The olives are picked as soon as they ripen, placed in baskets or sacks and sent to the presses. They are measured and paid for by volume and the unit of measure employed is the double decaliter. In the first months of harvesting, the olive yield hovers around two liters of oil for every twenty liters of oil, but later this value rises and sometimes reaches and even exceeds three liters of oil per double decaliter of olives.