No heat, no chemicals: from olive to extra virgin olive oil
3 min read
There is something rather remarkable about extra virgin olive oil.
It begins as a fruit hanging from an olive tree and, through a carefully controlled mechanical process, becomes the golden-green oil we drizzle over our food.
No chemical solvents. No refining. Just olives, mechanical extraction and a lot of attention to timing, temperature and quality.
This is where cold extraction comes in.
What does cold extraction actually mean?
You’ll often see cold extracted or cold pressed on bottles of olive oil, but the two terms aren't quite the same.
Under European regulations, cold extraction refers to virgin olive oil obtained at temperatures below 27°C through centrifugation.
The purpose of controlling the temperature is to help protect the natural characteristics of the olive oil. Heat can influence some of the delicate compounds responsible for an extra virgin olive oil's aroma, flavour and composition.
So, cold extraction doesn't mean the olives are literally processed cold. It means the temperature is carefully controlled throughout extraction.
From the olive tree to the mill
The journey begins with the olives themselves.
Once harvested, olives are taken within hours to the mill where they are cleaned and sorted before being crushed. Crushing breaks down the cells of the fruit, releasing tiny droplets of oil and creating a thick paste containing the olive's oil, water and solid material.
The fresher those olives are when they reach the mill, the better.
Olives are fruit, after all, and they continue to change after they have been picked.
What happens to the thick olive paste?
The olive paste is slowly mixed in a process called malaxation.
This allows the tiny droplets of oil to gradually join together into larger droplets, making the oil easier to separate.
Temperature is carefully monitored during this stage. Increasing the temperature can make extraction more efficient, but excessive heat can affect some of the oil's natural phenolic and aromatic compounds.
Then comes the centrifuge. But what is that?
Once the oil droplets have come together, the olive paste enters a centrifuge.
The paste is spun at high speed, separating the oil from the water and solid material according to their different densities.
The result is freshly extracted olive oil. Obtained mechanically, without heat or chemical solvents.
It sounds simple. In reality, every stage really matters.
Olive
Crushed paste
Malaxation
Centrifugation
Olive oil
Finally, chemical and sensory analysis will establish if the oil's classification is extra virgin olive oil.
The bottom line
From olive to oil, every step matters. No shortcuts, no chemical solvents. Just fresh fruit, careful mechanical extraction at the right temperature and the science that determines whether the final oil earns its extra virgin classification.
Find out more
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