Espana 8-Grazalema

This post happened before we went to Bilbao, but I was disorented and posted out of order...

But on to another day’s adventures. We had originally planned on taking the train over to Granada for another day trip, but it turns out the trip was too long and would have required an overnight stay, so we found ourselves with an extra day on our hands. Once again Jennifer’s amazing research skills came to the rescue. She wanted to see an olive oil plant (you know how she is about factories), so she found someone who specializes in three kinds of guided tours: wine, olive oil and pigs! Roger picked us up and drove us 52 miles out of the city to a little mountain town called Zahara. Let me just say that the drive alone might have been worth it, it was so beautiful. In Zahara we visited two “molinas” that pressed the local olives into oil. I’ll let Jennifer give you the details, but we got to taste some of the oil that was being pressed at the moment and man! was it good! So fruity, so green, so grassy, so GOOD! Then we drove over the mountain to Grazalema for lunch.
This over-the-mountain road was a serious ascent, I’d give you the statistics, but my grasp of the metric system sucks. On the way we picked acorns off the Holm oak. These are the acorns that the Iberico pigs eat that give the meat its unique qualities. Until I put one of those acorns in my mouth and bit it in half, I was feeling sorry for those poor pigs, but these are not anything like the acorns I’m familiar with. They’re oily and nutty, a bit like an almond or maybe a chestnut. Apparently the contain a lot of good nutrients that pass into the flesh of the pig and make Iberian pork a healthier choice. I hope that’s true as I’ve eaten more than my share on this trip.
Anyway, lunch was good, the trip was beautiful and informative and I got two birds on my life list. It was a good day . . .nll

Today Nora had glasses of olive oil for breakfast instead of sherry or cafe irlandes.

Most of the times of year, to olive oil producers are just growing olives. We luckily ended up visiting just at harvest time and the mills were just starting up. We went to a small family owned molina that was very high tech, and very clean. They do only first press extra virgin and make oil from the mazanilla and the lechina olives. The oil is centrifuged not pressed, so there are never any old or moldy bits stuck in the press mats.
Most places blend the oil, but this molina makes the pure varieties, as well as some blend of both olives. One of the owners got us a cup of manzanilla oil coming out just as it was finished and we compared that to the lechina that had been made the day before. OMineGatto, as John would say. The other thing they do is store in stainless steel vats with a nitrogen blanket taking up any headroom until it is bottled so no oxidation. Aging is not olive oils friend.

The second place we visited was old school, with the water used in the initial mixing heated by the corner olive wood and olive pit burning stove, olives crushed in a really old mill, churned in a rusty looking vat, pumped up and layered by hand on mat after mat, stacked together like a really big layer cake then put in a big press that slowly screws itself shut for 4-6 hours, all the while dumping out oil into a trough on the floor that drains into barrels and then is bottled. It was very good also, but of course I liked the little high tech place.
The very scenic drive included white villages nestled in the rough hills, goats, cows, sheep (we had local made sheep and goat milk cheeses that were fantastico!!) and a griffin vulture standing in the middle of the road…jah