How is the Oropuro extra virgin

Oropuro has a production process that, in each step, ensures the integrity of the compounds that characterize it as a good extra virgin, starting from harvesting to storage. Let us analyze in detail some salient points of the productive process:

Grinding time after harvesting: One of the strengths of the production process lies in the fact that among the olive harvest and their milling, it occurs a very short time: 5-8 hours, when usually for olive oil this time can be longer (24-48 hours). This allows to limit the fermentation of the olives, responsible for a quality deterioration of the fruit with a consequent formation of sensory defects, an increased acidity of the oil and potential loss in polyphenols.

Milling: For the milling of olives a very particular hammer-crushers is used completely in stainless steel. In the scientific literature it is known that the use of hammer-crushers, instead those made of stone allows a significantly higher polyphenol content. Furthermore, the use of stainless steel material allows an higher quality product because they produce less oxidative processes.

Kneading: During this phase, the olive paste obtained from the previous step is mixed in stainless steel tanks at a temperature of maximum 27 °C, a process which enables to make the so-called “cold pressing” (“spremitura a freddo”).

Extraction:This is the phase in which the oil is extracted from the ground paste. For this purpose a centrifuge is used, and the distinguishing feature of the system used for the Oropuro production is that no water is added at this stage (as it is usually done in traditional systems to separate oil from water). The absence of water to the mixture allows a greater retention of polyphenols in the oil, since these compounds are soluble in water, in which they can be wasted.

Moreover not using the traditional system of hydraulic press with fiscoli (circular panels made ​​of hemp upon which olive paste is spread, from which the oil can be extracted by pressure), but extracting oil with centrifugation method without the addition of water allows to limit oil oxidation (as the process occurs in a continuous cycle in closed plant, not in contact with air) and the contamination with previous productions, eliminating the problem of cleaning fiscoli between a production and another. The choice of the centrifugation’s method instead of the hydraulic press for the extraction of oil is essential to the realization of a pure organic extra virgin olive oil.