A DAY TRIP TO GET OLIVE OIL IN THE

ABRUZZI MOUNTAINS

March 11th, 2000

Okay, another trip. This trip unfortunately was without Maggie since she was still up in the UK at school.

Cathy (on the left), a friend here in Naples for work for a week (Fromt he Carolinas), Julie (on the right) and I went to the Abruzzi mountains to get fresh Olive Oil. Julie is a close friend of ours from here in Naples... she lives right near the gates to hell :-) right Julie?!!!

We left at about 6 am (ughh) with our friends Tony and Angela and several family members (Julia and Tony, Luisa and Georgio, Angela's Mother). We were 4 cars (I think!) and it took about 4 hours. Angela's mother has been going to this same place for oil for 38+ years now with her family so it was tradition as well as fun andwe were happy to have been invited. The exact location was about an hour from the Adriatic on zig-zag mountain roads that made Cathy and Julie a little car sick :-) The village is called Altino and I still cannot find it on any maps... can't even find any villages nearby... it is one of those "green spots" on the map that turns out picture-perfect beautiful.

The first thing to do upon arrival after greeting half the neigborhood was for the men to Tony, Tony and Georgio) weigh the empty containers (I am taking the photo but honest I helped!). We used both metal and plastic containers with good seals. We paid for the oil "by weight" so we subtracted the empty weight from the full to get our "oil weight" and then paid per kilogram. The actual price after Luisa finished "bargaining Neapolitan style" was quite good and less then normally paid in recent years. If you ask me, it looks like Luisa is about to hit the poor man while Angela's mom looks on with approval (she is from Naples of course!) and the man was so nice!

Next we had to "test" the oil of course. This involves fresh baked bread, a little oil and a a sprinkle of salt. Here, Luisa prepares a taste with Angela's assistance for us men since we are busy pouring and carrying oil.. or is Angela doing the tasting? Angela? Comment? You cannot eat fresh bread with olive oil without a little chunk of original Parmesan so the owners wife brought out a chunk to nibble on... Ahhh Italy ! After the long drive, the quality of the oil we selected well worth the trip.

Now came the hard part. We had to fill the containers. I think we got around 1000 liters total so this was no trivial task. Tony (Julias Tony!) along with Tony (Angela's) and Georgio did most of the pouring. I helped carry it over to the scale... and take photos :-) Angela and Julia made sure that we were pouring correctly and not taking too many breaks when we were supposed to be carrying the oil.

We naturally checked out the various implements for making this wonderful oil. In the process (after the olives are gathered from the trees of course) first the olives are crushed in a huge mill/grinder... this thing is BIG. After that, the crushed olives are layered between big flat and round sheets of steel that are stacked together and put into the press. The press squishes the "wheels" together and the oil comes out. The oil is then stored in big containers to folks like us come and buy it. The rest of the olives are then sold for additional crushing/pressing.

After we finished pouring, weighing and paying for (the only bad part about the trip!) the oil, we packed it into the cars, and went to a "Agro Restaurant" to eat. The lunch was great after all the hard work but you will have to wait for the other pictures to get developed! Let me just say that the we ate lunch down the hill from the village and the view was great.

More photos will follow. The other roll of film is still in the camera. I has stuff from the feast afterwards !

Maggie had a suggestion that from now on our "photo pages" will have a little bit of information on them, not just a list of pictures... hope all enjoy!

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