Day 40 - The Olive Oil Journey

Kalamata | December 5th, 2022

I'm not sure if people realize this but I type most of these blog entries with my eyes literally closed or staring into complete space. I don’t like looking at the computer screen or keyboard (thank you Ms Maniscalco in 6th grade) when typing for some reason as it influences my train of thought.

I wake up, do some computer work, and cook myself some eggs for breakfast. This is the first cooking I've done since my time in Quesada and it felt pretty good - especially since the eggs were freshly laid. I ate upstairs with the hosts followed by a tour of the property. Fresh orange off the tree, discovering new eggs, quick discussion of the olive trees on site and neighboring properties took us through the early part of the morning. I had no hard tours scheduled and had the host connected me with a local miller as well as a local spot for lunch.

I followed my host's motorcycle to the spot and we took a brief facility tour. The one observation I made was the way olives were stored before entering the mill. If you remember in one of my previous entries I mentioned stacking Olives in crates to relieve the lowermost olives of the weight crush and heat. Interestingly in Greece they don’t pile the olives which is good, but many producers still use the sacks for soring the olives pre-crushing. The greatest benefit of the sacks is more organization. However, a similar effect takes place as the weight is uniformly distrusted onto the next sac of olives as opposed to distributed around the perimeter.

After the visit I headed to lunch but not before a stop at a local isolated beach. I climbed the rock piers, did some meditation (not my best work though 10/10 environment), and skipped rocks to calm m mind. Then I hit the local lunch joint that was filled with Greeks and their families.

I ask for authentic (figuratively), and they bring me a menu in handwritten list form with no prices. Lamb and Potatoes was calling my name and I'm so happy I ordered that. Final Tally: 10 euro…bless.

After lunch I head into the town of Kalamata for a coffee but felt like I wasn’t done with visits. So I google search some olive groves nearby and the place I stopped by sounded familiar but didn’t know why. I met one of the workers coincidently at the Fancy Food Conference in June! I was kinda in shock but also realizing again how important conferences like these are for producers and it shouldn't be a coincidence that a big producer has a familiar face form the conference. I must have lost the business card because they never made it to the olive oil spreadsheet.

After a brief visit I go back into town for a snack, go homr, write, shower, change, post on instagram, and grabbed dinner.

Dinner was a $3.10 souvlaki sandwich - same place as day before - eaten while watching the world cup and mingling with locals. I parked about a 3 minute walk from the place and had a general idea of where my car was. NOT

Took me 25 minutes of scrambling to find that car! It was literally like "escape the room" - find the car to win. People on the street, my phone, and a faint picture of a nearby sign were the hints. And that's it. If this were a game I probably would have lost.

No joke the town of Kalamata is lit. People gas up Mykonos and Santorini and I'm the one who typically fades those types of places anyway. If you're like me but still want to visit a main area of Greece, Kalamata has great clubs, restaurants, nightlife, mix of locals / tourists especially in the summer, beaches, mountains, folliage, agriculture, fishing, and much more (yes Kalamata Olives too).

1 Olive Oil Takeaway

Just my theory: people ask all the time if there is Kalamata olive oil. Yes it exists, but the Olive itself is large enough for table olive use & has the name Kalamata olive - justifying a higher price point. I haven't crunched the numbers but it seems like keeping the olives whole would make the most sense per olive economically. On the other hand, many olive varietals are tiny and would never work as a table olive - Koroneiki being the example in this region. If I were a farmer of both Kalamata and Koroneiki, I would never use the Kalamata for olive oil unless unsuitable for table olives (would be low grade olive oil sold to big oil corp).

-Jack

Thank you for reading and welcome to the blog! I'm traveling through Europe on a quest to find great Olive Oil.