The extra virgin oil is surely the most typical element of mediterranean diet, it is also the one with the highest quality and preciosity. It is nowadays commercialized all around the world and it is becoming a good remedy to decrease the use of other kinds of fats both animal and vegetal, richer of cholesterol, so much used in other countries (such as U.S.A., Germany, Latin America, ex-sovietic countries etc.)
Extra virgin olive's oil is made, according to italian laws, only through the pressing of olives whose acidity, told in mg of holeic acyd for 100 gr of oil, must be lower than an unity (1,0). The same legislation imposes a lot of characteristics both organoleptic and analytic, to guarantee the genuinity of the product and to avoid any kind of sophistication. If only one of these characteristics is missing, the oil is declassed to an inferior grade (as regard quality and price), up to the proihibition to be sold.
The production of the oil, for the realization of the final product, begins with the handly picking of olives (from November to December).
Then, olives are brought to the oil press, where they are washed and pressed with two stone wheels, called Molazze, which crush both olives and their stones. The reducing mixture, called Pasta, is spread out onto particular filters (popularly called Fiscoli) which have to separate the pasta's layers. All this layers are pressed with oleodynamics presses in order to make all the oil in the pasta come out. Consequently, the liquid is again worked to eliminate all the olive's vegetation water and to have pure oil. The material remained on the fiscoli is called sansa and, after the end of the production, it is picked and sent to sansifici where there is the extraction of the left oil (generally about 6%) obviuosly of a worse quality.
To be sold the extravirgin oil is not submitted to any kind of adulteration in order to preserve all its special nutritive characteristics thanks to which it is the healthiest element produced by nature.