How olive oil is made in the countryside

I use olive oil on my diet in a daily basis and the one made with the olives of our backyard is the number one, in quality, of course.

These photos are from the archives (3 years ago) taken at Lagar de Azeite Azenha to intentionally show, roughly, the process. Tons of olives enter this place so that in the end you get olive oil extracted by modern processes of extraction (machines). Maybe there are still lost places where the extraction is manual but that should be hard to find.

Almost everyone has olive trees in the backyard or someone in the family, so making olive oil is a task/tradition among portuguese people like doing the wine. Even if this is a common thing to do in places where agriculture exists for sure a lot of people don't have any idea how things look like at least, or act surprised how can olive oil be so expensive. That's why sometimes people give, as a gift, a bottle of olive oil due to its value. You have the lovers of this olive oil and who make sure to use it in the Christmas Eve with potatoes & codfish, and the others who prefer a more refined olive oil bought in supermarkets because of the acidity and the intensity of the flavour, I guess.

Anyway it's one of the best products Portugal has to offer, some say it was the first product to be exported from the country.

Thank you to Lúcia Cardoso and the owners of Azena that gave me permission to take these photos. The initial intention was another one but at least a set of photos has been published for the posterity and I'm happy to having it done.

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