Olive Oil Production in Paxos

It all started with the golden green tree. Five centuries old and still yielding top quality olive oil.

Despite Covid-19 and the lockdown, we picked our olives in mid-November. Olive picking season in Greece is usually October to February latest.

The olives, just picked from the trees, started to form a small hill. On average, we harvest between 500-700kg olives every year.

An ancient Greek superfood!

Before going to the mill, the olives need to be cleaned and washed with water, so as to remove dirt and other materials.

The olives, hand-picked and clean, ready for the mill.

This year we tried three different methods of crushing our olives. Method 1: cold-pressed in a small, artisanal olive oil press . Method 2: conventional pressing at the local oil mill. And, method 3, also cold-pressed at a brand new, professional, big scale press on the mainland.

The final stage of extrating the olive oil in the big scale mill. This is our olive oil dripping!

Olive Oil Acidity Test! We used a home kit to test this. Results: 0.5% (extra virgin).