With Olive Harvest in full swing Wild Groves wanted to bring you #behindthescenes and share part of the magic that’s behind bringing you the best, most flavorful extra virgin olive oil on the planet.

After the olive fruit has been picked and placed into bins, it is transported to the mill to begin the process of cold pressing the olives to make olive oil. Amazingly, we can make olive oil within 45 minutes of the olives arriving at the mill.

First the olive fruit is placed into a hopper that will catch and remove leaves, debris, and stems.

The fruit is then moved up a conveyer belt that brings them to a washer to remove all foreign matter, and cleans the olives to prepare them for the next process of the macerator (crusher).

Once in the macerator, the olives will be crushed into a paste (the whole olive, pit and all), that  will tear the flesh of the cells and releases the oil from the fruit.

At this point the paste is then put into a malaxer, where it spends most of the time in the process, mixing, and separating the oil, from the flesh and water of the olive.

From the malaxer the paste is pumped into a decanter which spins at a high rate of speed (over 1,600 rpm) separating the oil, water, and solids. Leaving you with a bright beautiful stream of fresh new olive oil.

The last step involves a “polisher” which is another centrifuge that spins the oil even faster (over 3,000 rpm) and helps to clean the oil from larger particles left from the decanter.

What makes this process so special and unique is that the olive oil is removed from the olive purely by mechanical means, there are no chemicals used or heat, like most other oils require to manufacture. Thus, the reason that extra virgin olive oil is so healthy for you.