Olive Oil

[johnw4]

Hi

Can anyone tell me how many kilos of olives it takes to make 1 litre of olive oil?

[Clanad]

There are lots of variables, i.e., size of olives, oil content, etc., but one source indicates between 1500 and 2000 olives to make a quart of oil...

[johnw4]

I wonder if that would be US olives?

When I tested out the question before joining theanswerbank, the automatic answer came back with...'that's rather like asking how long is a piece of string!' But Carol Drinkwater mentions in her book she was given 3 ltrs of oil for 12kgs of olives and a similar press nearby gave 1 litre of extra virgen cold pressing oil from 3 kgs of olives.

[Pinotage]

Carol Drinkwater in The Olive Farm (Page 261 paperback edition) says one press offered 1 litre cold pressed extra virgin oil for 6 kilos of olives, but another needed less olives.

Answer is -- it seems - it depends :)

[brachiopod]

Is that Carol Drinkwater as in 'All Creatures Great & Small', Pinotage ?

[Pinotage]

- Yes.

On an impulse she bought an old farmhouse in the hills above Nice. It had a grove of olive trees and her book is a warm hearted account of her time there, her new love and the olive trees.

She came to a book evening at our bookshop, and she is a lovely lady. :)

She was very nervous to start with, which surprised me as she was a professional actress, but she soon settled down and we had a most enjoyable evening.

I can well recommend her book if you want to be taken out of the cold British winter and taken to the warmth of southern France for a few hours. I took her follow up book ((the Olive Season) with me when I was in Nice & Provence during the summer and enjoyed it there while smelling the garrigue and looking at olive trees and drinking the local wine.