Day 3 - The Olive Oil Journey

Welcome to the blog. I'm traveling through Europe on a quest to find great Olive Oil.

4th Sales and Trading (S&T) Superday at Citi (rejected from previous 3 at Wells, JP, and CS), 388 Greenwich St, Tribeca, NY, September 2018

"Hey, I'm Jack. I grew up on Long Island and am a third year at UVA (University of Virginia - didn't sound cool enough to say) studying commerce (finance for people that aren't UVA alumni) and math. At UVA I was treasurer of my fraternity…I would like to do sales and trading because it is the optimal combination of math and business skills…"

Backtrack to Spring Semester 2018

I had a fortunate seat in my differential equations class in 2018. I was sandwiched between two people (DJ & Alex) who had done internships in finance. They quite literally never stopped talking about banks/small shops and the programs they offered. I learned a ton, but it seemed that highly sought-after investment banking (IB) was not the right path. Regardless, I still had a solid IB internship that summer. After one of those guys (DJ) recommended S&T as the proper industry and I realized it required less prep work/competition [and while doing a summer of investment banking it was obvious it wasn't the stimulating "mathy" work I wanted], I committed to S&T as my career - at least for the internship.

Present Day

I left Citi in March 2022, and here I am writing this while sneezing (cat allergy) in a Cortijo (farmhouse) in a tiny Spanish village named Quesada where people wear T-Shirts that say Harvard or Brooklyn but haven't seen an American in their village in a long time. The smile people have after hearing where I’m from is the tell.

I will admit the fly quantity level in the Cortijo is reminiscent of a camp bunk without the fly traps x 10. Living on a Farm = many many many flies. Despite this, it's quite pleasant.

Day 3 in Quesada, Andalucia, Spain: October 27th, 2022

First half of the Day

"Jack, don't think, just do"

"You need to do some meditation - get your mind in your body! Not up there (pointing to the sky)!"

- Feedback to my Olive Tree Hitting Technique

My job today is simple, get as many olives off of the tree in as little time as possible. The head farmer goes around with an electric trunk grabber and does a little shaking of the tree. At that moment, the olives are easier to hit off, and once you find the proper angle of attack on the olives at the same time they are getting shaken, they start flying everywhere - in a good way.

The work to actually get those olives off the tree at this farm is like going to a smash room in NYC and hitting everything in plain sight, as long as you hit perpendicular to the branches since face-on easily destroys them. I'm not so angry today but if I were, this would be a great reliever.

There's a black & white picture in Ben's Deli [in my hometown] of construction workers sitting on the ledge of the bridge. My thoughts have always been if they fall, that's the end! How are they doing that?

So I went back up 5 feet on the olive tree without a photo, where there's definitely a red zone and a blue zone. Red zone, I'm pretty much falling down a rocky Double Black Diamond Trail at Snowbird. Blue zone, fine as I'm falling upslope.

The people on the bridge probably had the same thing. But if they had two red zones, damnnnnnn that’s tough.

Today is my birthday, but responding to birthday texts doesn't work for these farmers as an excuse even after the mental and physical exhaustion after 2 hours of hitting a tree. I'm rather getting "Jack, what are you doing?" I have to say "I need a stick [to hit the olives]" to bail myself out.

This experience demonstrates why pruning exists. Pruning makes more sense as you want the olives to be on the outside for hitting them. The inside and tall olives are way harder to get.

Tomatoes and hummus for lunch. Had about 4 rounds of this and just kept dumping olive oil on. Satisfying

Second Half of the Day

My mind keeps going back to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory. It is a representation of what already exists in this world. Would chocolate lava coming out of a volcano be a nice thing to eat? Yes, it would. But fruits and vegetables can be eaten right off the tree. The consistency of fresh olive oil is reminiscent of the chocolate river.

So many great action shots that could have been taken but given the shortage of labor, I couldn’t spend any time doing pictures. To reiterate these people take olive harvesting very seriously, and given I "have strength" they want me constantly hitting. I mean the climbing angles, falling into hay, olives hitting my eye and banging my head on a branch. Pretty funny stuff if on film but you just have to trust me here - it would have been disrespectful to ask. Any picture I took was pretty much snuck in.

Time at the Mill

The cost of going to the mill is helping with the olive gathering: Worth it.

The mill itself is separated into 2 parts. One conventional section and one organic section. This mill is run by a "small" cooperative. This particular cooperative is for Olive Oil grown in Quesada. Cooperatives have an immense amount of power in this industry.

(A good analogy for a cooperative is pretending Cooperative ABC makes orange juice in Florida. ABC buys products from local farmers and turns it into juice, which gets sold to business and consumers).

One thing that really impresses me is the initial quality control of the olives coming into the mill

Lasers to measure Olive temperature as they are getting milled to ensure Olives were getting cold pressed (<27 degrees Celsius).

After speaking with the head of the cooperative, he handed over my first-ever try of "fresh from the press" Olive Oil (also called Olio Nuovo or Novello depending on the region). Tasted incredible.

Dinner in the Village

$11.50 for 3 glasses of wine, 1 beer, and tapas. Enough said...

1 Olive Oil Takeaway

The province of Jaen (where Quesada is located & Insert Wikipedia) produces more Olive Oil than Italy and Greece combined (#2 and #4 in Olive Oil production quantity by country). So when a company mentions they source from Jaen, Spain, what information are you really getting?

-Jack