Panic at the Olive Mill in Provence Fran ce
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denmansoft
Gold Member
I need to find someone who will ship to BC Canada!
Hey guess what? Yippie we now have a distrubutor in Canada! They didn't even get our oil yet but are promoting it and have back orders. Within the last few weeks I got an e-mail from an olive oil store in Montreal that wanted to buy so I directed him to our new distributor and they placed an order so when we make our first shipment after the harvest Mas Des Bories Olive Oil will be sold in Canada. That is a relaly cool win, hey now we are in Canada. Well not yet but very soon.
The reaon I am able to post this morning is because my dad is pretty sick. He had 2 violent episodes of vomiting in the night and now this morning he is blowing out the other end as well. I'm really worried about him and I'm staying in the house this morning. I cna't bring the olives to the mill until early this afternoon so that kind of works out good. We won't leave him alone though, if/when I go to the mill our cook will be here with him and she spent 15 years caring for an elderly handicapped man so she is capable and if he were to take a turn she could get my husband out of the field.
I feel so sorry for my dad. Yesterday he came in at 2:30 and said he needed to lay down and rest a bit but to wake him up in half an hour. I didn't need to, in half an hour he was up and ready to go out again. He asked if I would drive him to the field instead of his having to walk so sure I did that. Then at 5pm I went and got the car thinking to give him a ride back but he wanted to stay and work. He worked until it was so dark he couldn't see the branches any more and walked back home himself. The crew finished up by tractor light to case the olives. He was very satisfied last night that he got to work until almost 6pm. Like I said before my dad really really wants to work. Right now he is sleeping and I hope he is able to recoperate qucikly. He is not going to be happy in bed sick if there is work to do.
Last night for the French we made an American dish. Started with a fresh spinach salad with a hot bacon dressing dressed with slices of hard boiled eggs and mushroom slices. Nobody here had ever had fresh spinach as a salad and of course never had a hot baclon dressing, my husband made that. They all loved it!!! it was a big hit.
I better quit writing and go back and check on my dad. Oh one more thing we finished with the Grosanne and started picking the bouteillan. Still a lot of olives to go but it always feels great to finish a variatal.
Dan- Yeah we also jsut pour the olive oil right on the salad greens, nothing else is needed. I just love the fact that you are on TBN and use our oil and enjoy it. It's realy good for you and I'm so pleased that you enjoy it.
denmansoft
Gold Member
Thanks Rox.
Can I get a name and address for Montreal to place my order, or should I get you an outlet out here on the west coast?
Can I get a name and address for Montreal to place my order, or should I get you an outlet out here on the west coast?
Egon
Epic Contributor
Surely hope Your father recovers quickly Rox. 
denmansoft,Surely hope Your father recovers quickly Rox.
I'll look up the info and send you a PM, I am conscience about not doing to much self promotion on TBN.
Egon- The doctor made a house call and was here within an hour and a half of calling him. My dad has a gastro intestinal virus and it is a pretty bad one. The doc said it is going around our city and the next village. On Sunday since we couldn't pick my husband took mty father out to the open air market and then took him out for coffee, he must have picked it up on Sunday. I know when my dad recovers he will say, "Gee if I was working instead of out visiting I wouldn't have gotten sick" The doc is very nice ran it under my husband's name so no charge and at the pharmacy the meds were only 24 euros. Health are here is very very good and much lower cost than in the states.
I gotta go to the mill, see u later
Egon
Epic Contributor
Good to hear all is looking up Rox.
I made 5 trips to the mill today and would have made 6 but again they ran out of the pallet boxes. What is happening now is the mill is picking their own olives, they ahve 6,000 trees. So that is why they told the other producers to wait until Thursday it was so they could get their own olives in and pressed! Ah ha! Oh my gosh the second and really big batch of Grosanne oil we picked up today is fantastic at least twice as good as our first pick up which was small. It is even better than last year and last year we won a Gold Mecal at the Los Angeles County Fair for the Grosanne. Tomorrow or the day after we will try our Bouteillan, I got my fingers crossed that it is going to be good, well to be honest I really want more than good, I want it to be great, fantastic and awsome. We'll see soon.
My dad has been sick all day but tonight he watched a little tv and sat up in bed for an hour and a hlaf. The doctor said he is going to be sick for 3 days. I sure do like it when they make house calls. It sure beats sitting in the waiting room of the ER waiting for hours to be seen and in the mean time infectiong everyone around you. The doc said it is a highly contagious virus so we are all vigilent to wipe down everything that comes out of my dads room and of course wash our hands like 50 times a day. That is all we need other members of our crew getting sick, so we are taking recautions as the doctor advised. I hope he is better tomorrow, my mom was awful sad when I called and told her.
My dad has been sick all day but tonight he watched a little tv and sat up in bed for an hour and a hlaf. The doctor said he is going to be sick for 3 days. I sure do like it when they make house calls. It sure beats sitting in the waiting room of the ER waiting for hours to be seen and in the mean time infectiong everyone around you. The doc said it is a highly contagious virus so we are all vigilent to wipe down everything that comes out of my dads room and of course wash our hands like 50 times a day. That is all we need other members of our crew getting sick, so we are taking recautions as the doctor advised. I hope he is better tomorrow, my mom was awful sad when I called and told her.
Bird
Rest in Peace
Rox, I'm glad to hear your dad is better. And I'm old enough to remember doctors who made house calls, but I think in this part of the world at least, that's a thing of the past. I haven't heard of a doctor who would do that in many years. In fact, the Dallas Morning News has run a couple of stories lately about how bad it is at Parkland Hospital. One guy sat in the emergency room 19 hours before he was seen by a doctor and he died. A woman waited in the emergency room for 19 hours, then left and went home and they sent her a bill anyway, supposedly because she had been seen by a triage nurse.
FrogLick
Silver Member
Rox I'm really enjoying your posts as well as some of your olive oil! Hopefully your dad is well on his way to recovery by now. Also hope the real estate situation you unexpectedly found yourself in stateside is working out without much loss of capital. Am I imagining it or is it your long term goal of having your own mill?
jinman
Rest in Peace
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Rox, I echo everyone else's good wishes for your dad. You are so lucky to have both parents still living. You must be also made of hearty stock. I know lots of women your age who could not do a tenth of what you seem to do on a regular basis.
I'm also thrilled that all your varietal olive oils are turning out so well. That's super news for all of us who buy and use your oils. I look forward to again buying and giving gifts of your "best in world" olive oil.
I'm curious about the mill. Do they just run that mill during daytime hours? Do they crush during the day and then clean up at night? I guess if I were a grower who had available labor not being productive, I might ask the mill if I could help them by providing some labor. I know you want to one day have your own mill. Wouldn't this be an opportunity to learn for the future? Maybe the mill can only use skilled labor and others would just get in the way and reduce production. I'm not sure, but the idea did cross my mind.
Congratulations again, and I hope your restaurant re-sale in the US turns out as good as this year's olive harvest.
I know lots of women your age who could not do a tenth of what you seem to do on a regular basis.I'm also thrilled that all your varietal olive oils are turning out so well. That's super news for all of us who buy and use your oils. I look forward to again buying and giving gifts of your "best in world" olive oil.
I'm curious about the mill. Do they just run that mill during daytime hours? Do they crush during the day and then clean up at night? I guess if I were a grower who had available labor not being productive, I might ask the mill if I could help them by providing some labor. I know you want to one day have your own mill. Wouldn't this be an opportunity to learn for the future? Maybe the mill can only use skilled labor and others would just get in the way and reduce production. I'm not sure, but the idea did cross my mind.
Congratulations again, and I hope your restaurant re-sale in the US turns out as good as this year's olive harvest.
RSKY
Elite Member
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Thank you very much for taking the time to post about your harvest. I know you are very busy and taking the time to post is very much appreciated by me and all others on TBN.
I hope your father recovers and is able to work some more for you. My mother is 83 and I am constantly being scolded by neighbors and friends for 'letting' her mow her yard and drive her tractor. As if I could stop her.
I will try to get some of your oil.
Good luck and God bless you and yours.
RSKY
I hope your father recovers and is able to work some more for you. My mother is 83 and I am constantly being scolded by neighbors and friends for 'letting' her mow her yard and drive her tractor. As if I could stop her.
I will try to get some of your oil.
Good luck and God bless you and yours.
RSKY
Jinman and I guess everyine. Many thanks for your kind thoughts. My dad is still recovering he does not feel strong enough to work on the harvest yet so he has to console himself with jsut cleaning the fireplace and bringing firewood and building the evening fire. Yesterday he tried it for the first time and he could only get in half the wood and had to go lay down and take a nap he was so exhausted. Today he did a little bit better but he is still feeling fatigued. But the blowing from both ends has stopped for a few days now, like the day after the doctor was here, so he jsut needs to get his strength back.
As for me I am butt tired, it's 9pm and I'm already in bed. I hope we can keep it up, I'm making 4 trips to the mill every day and during the day the one guy who is on the receiving doc is kind of lazy. Normally they help me pull the crates of olives out of the back of our mountaineer and into the pallet box. Alan will reluctantly make a half hearted effort but the micro second he sees a way to run away he does. These cases are 50lb cases stacked 2 high so you have to lift the top crate up off the bottom crate and oh my gosh my back and arms and leggs are killing me today. All day I was tired. I hope if I get a good nights sleep tomorrow I'll feel better. I unloaded 80 cases of 50lb each yesterday and today I feel it.
Well I was really ticked off about our Bouteillan! The first load of Bouteillan I brought in they pressed and I always have them put the first oil of a new varital in a 60 liter drum and take it home so that we have a drum of each kind of oil at home. I tasted it and I was not impressed at all. Not only that but the yield was only 10%. Now the Bouteillan and the Grosanne always have a lower yield but 10% is ridiculous. I had called the mill manager Christine to complain about it and with the second load I brought in the next day I talked to her husband who actually runs the mill equipment at night. It runs 24 hours a day. I told Pierre that the oil was only ordinary and I expect extrodinary and on top of that the yield at 10% was way way to low. To give you a conmparison the yield on our Salonenque varietal was about 22%. Well Pierre hung his head and asked me if he wanted me to fill a second tank with the oil he pressed yesterday night after i left. I said no, I am so upset about the taste of the oil that I did not want a tank of it, at the most he should save me a bottle. See the thing is for the Grosanne and the Bouteillan the maloxer (after the olvies are crushed they go into a maloxer which gently kneads the paste which releases the oil out of the olive meat) needs to turn very slow in order to not waste/loose the flavor. So if they turn it at a slower RPM then they need to run it longer in order for us to get a decent yield. I am sure he ran it too fast on the first batch because it was jsut ordinary (well still better than 98% of all olive oil sold but to me it was ordinary) I want award winning olive oil, I want premium olive oil, I want to make the best in the world olive oil, I don't want good, I want great oil. So Pierre hung his head and said he would take great care last night when he pressed our oil. Man that jsut bugged me to no end all last night so this morning even though I really can't stand the manager at our old mill I took 2 loads over there anyway jsut to keep my current mill honest. One of the volunteer employees of our old mill called us on Tuesday and said they now had capacity so if we wanted to bring them olives they would take good care of us.
I talked it over with my hsuband this morning and we decided to take half our daily production to our current mill and half to our old mill. We are picking about 1,800 kilos a day. Boy oh boy did they ever suck up to me at the old mill. The guy who runs the milling equipment at night came out and talked to me personally and asked what I wanted. I said I want you to malox it slow and for a long time. He said "I'll set the speed at 300 which is our lowest and run it a good long time" That made me real happy. Then I took 2 loads to our current mill and I told Christine what I did. She was really p*ssed off that I took olives to a different mill but in the end she knew from yesterday I wan't happy. I tasted our big tank of oil and I have to admit what our current mill pressed last night was 5 times better then their first pressing of our fist load so talking to Pierre he had to have changed something. Christine's father also talked to me and we was very sad that I felt I had to go to another mill to check up on them. It is a fine line to walk to get what I want but not to p*ss them off. I would rather stay at our current mill but I will not sacrafice one year's worth of my husband and my work out of sheer loyalty. I gotta have great oil and I am going to go to the place that is going to make that for me. So both places are pressing the exact same olives picked off of the same lines of trees and tomorrow I'll go and taste each one and see what the yields are and then me and my hsuband will make our decision. To be honest it is mostly me who will decide on the mill. My husband has his hands full just running the picking crews, I primarily deal with the mills. Tonight we had a salad with the Bouteillan olive oil that was pressed last night and honestly it was so delicious I almost feel guilty about putting my current mill through the test. But on the other hand a yield of 12.8% is really low so I guess I was right to push them. But the flaovr between the first load of Bouteillan and the second load is like night and day, it is really good I have to admit it. But if our old mill can give us really good and a higher yield they are going to get my business. The difference between 10% and 12.6% is like 400 Euros a day. Multiply that by how manhy days we pick Bouteillan and it is a couple thousand Euros. it was so good on the salad though I am feeling guilty as I write this. BUT OTOH that fist batched they pressed really was nothing to write home about so I know I needed to bang a few heads.
You all would laugh your butts off if you saw me becaue my French is really crappy, I never formally studied it and my verb conjugation is non existant and I never even try to get the right feminin and masculain words at all. But some how I get my point across. I speak French like a new immgrant to the Unites States, " I go store" That is how my French is. One thing I do know is I have respect in the olive and olive oil community. Everyone knows my husband and I and they know we came otta nowhere and put our oil as one of the best in the world. They call us "Les Americaines" It is kind of funny becasue my husband is French but they still call him "The American."
One day in the not to distant future we ill have our own mill and that will make me very happy. As it is now we are dependednt on the mills to process our olives correctly I would rather control our own destiny and do it myself. These olives here are really really excellent and there is no reason our oil should be ordinary. If the oil turns out ordinary that is because the mill isn't doing their job right. They are trying to put more olives through the process to fast at the sacrafice of quality. Trust me tonight there are two mill operators tonight doing their very best to turn our olives into fantastic oil. Tomorrow we will have the results and I am quite anxious to see the results. The thing is I don't want them as my enemy, their objectives are different than mine and somebody has to yield. They make more money the faster they can shoot olives throught he system, we make more money the higher quality our oil is. They need us but we also need them. I made such a fuss that I think our needs are going to come out on top, we'll see tomorrow. I probably repeated myelsef like six times in this post but I'm all wound up about it. Why should I settle for ordinary when with proper milling I can get extrodinary? Why should I accept a lower yield when if they would run it slow and long I can get a better yield?
I'm not sure where we are at with our restaurant sale in USA. We might get an offer very soon but maybe not. That really sucks and he both my husband and myself very concerned about our financial future. I know we have asset and we will come out of the current situation but I do not feel comfortable at all right now. I follow through with that at night and during the day jsut concentrate ont he harvest. My sister gave me some wise words years ago. She said not to get worked up over things you have no control over. I don't ahve any control over if we get an offer on our restaurant or not so I am not going to stress over it. it is listed it is getting lots of showings and if this current negotiation doesn't pop then in a few weeks we might drop the price. For the moment we are holding fast. I gotta stick by what my sister days, "Don't get all worked up over things you cannont control"
Well this post has been quite a stress releiver for me I was stressed about our Bouteillan oil but after writing it all out hre on TBN I am calmer about it. I bet tomorrow I have two great pressings of our oil
As for me I am butt tired, it's 9pm and I'm already in bed. I hope we can keep it up, I'm making 4 trips to the mill every day and during the day the one guy who is on the receiving doc is kind of lazy. Normally they help me pull the crates of olives out of the back of our mountaineer and into the pallet box. Alan will reluctantly make a half hearted effort but the micro second he sees a way to run away he does. These cases are 50lb cases stacked 2 high so you have to lift the top crate up off the bottom crate and oh my gosh my back and arms and leggs are killing me today. All day I was tired. I hope if I get a good nights sleep tomorrow I'll feel better. I unloaded 80 cases of 50lb each yesterday and today I feel it.
Well I was really ticked off about our Bouteillan! The first load of Bouteillan I brought in they pressed and I always have them put the first oil of a new varital in a 60 liter drum and take it home so that we have a drum of each kind of oil at home. I tasted it and I was not impressed at all. Not only that but the yield was only 10%. Now the Bouteillan and the Grosanne always have a lower yield but 10% is ridiculous. I had called the mill manager Christine to complain about it and with the second load I brought in the next day I talked to her husband who actually runs the mill equipment at night. It runs 24 hours a day. I told Pierre that the oil was only ordinary and I expect extrodinary and on top of that the yield at 10% was way way to low. To give you a conmparison the yield on our Salonenque varietal was about 22%. Well Pierre hung his head and asked me if he wanted me to fill a second tank with the oil he pressed yesterday night after i left. I said no, I am so upset about the taste of the oil that I did not want a tank of it, at the most he should save me a bottle. See the thing is for the Grosanne and the Bouteillan the maloxer (after the olvies are crushed they go into a maloxer which gently kneads the paste which releases the oil out of the olive meat) needs to turn very slow in order to not waste/loose the flavor. So if they turn it at a slower RPM then they need to run it longer in order for us to get a decent yield. I am sure he ran it too fast on the first batch because it was jsut ordinary (well still better than 98% of all olive oil sold but to me it was ordinary) I want award winning olive oil, I want premium olive oil, I want to make the best in the world olive oil, I don't want good, I want great oil. So Pierre hung his head and said he would take great care last night when he pressed our oil. Man that jsut bugged me to no end all last night so this morning even though I really can't stand the manager at our old mill I took 2 loads over there anyway jsut to keep my current mill honest. One of the volunteer employees of our old mill called us on Tuesday and said they now had capacity so if we wanted to bring them olives they would take good care of us.
I talked it over with my hsuband this morning and we decided to take half our daily production to our current mill and half to our old mill. We are picking about 1,800 kilos a day. Boy oh boy did they ever suck up to me at the old mill. The guy who runs the milling equipment at night came out and talked to me personally and asked what I wanted. I said I want you to malox it slow and for a long time. He said "I'll set the speed at 300 which is our lowest and run it a good long time" That made me real happy. Then I took 2 loads to our current mill and I told Christine what I did. She was really p*ssed off that I took olives to a different mill but in the end she knew from yesterday I wan't happy. I tasted our big tank of oil and I have to admit what our current mill pressed last night was 5 times better then their first pressing of our fist load so talking to Pierre he had to have changed something. Christine's father also talked to me and we was very sad that I felt I had to go to another mill to check up on them. It is a fine line to walk to get what I want but not to p*ss them off. I would rather stay at our current mill but I will not sacrafice one year's worth of my husband and my work out of sheer loyalty. I gotta have great oil and I am going to go to the place that is going to make that for me. So both places are pressing the exact same olives picked off of the same lines of trees and tomorrow I'll go and taste each one and see what the yields are and then me and my hsuband will make our decision. To be honest it is mostly me who will decide on the mill. My husband has his hands full just running the picking crews, I primarily deal with the mills. Tonight we had a salad with the Bouteillan olive oil that was pressed last night and honestly it was so delicious I almost feel guilty about putting my current mill through the test. But on the other hand a yield of 12.8% is really low so I guess I was right to push them. But the flaovr between the first load of Bouteillan and the second load is like night and day, it is really good I have to admit it. But if our old mill can give us really good and a higher yield they are going to get my business. The difference between 10% and 12.6% is like 400 Euros a day. Multiply that by how manhy days we pick Bouteillan and it is a couple thousand Euros. it was so good on the salad though I am feeling guilty as I write this. BUT OTOH that fist batched they pressed really was nothing to write home about so I know I needed to bang a few heads.
You all would laugh your butts off if you saw me becaue my French is really crappy, I never formally studied it and my verb conjugation is non existant and I never even try to get the right feminin and masculain words at all. But some how I get my point across. I speak French like a new immgrant to the Unites States, " I go store" That is how my French is. One thing I do know is I have respect in the olive and olive oil community. Everyone knows my husband and I and they know we came otta nowhere and put our oil as one of the best in the world. They call us "Les Americaines" It is kind of funny becasue my husband is French but they still call him "The American."
One day in the not to distant future we ill have our own mill and that will make me very happy. As it is now we are dependednt on the mills to process our olives correctly I would rather control our own destiny and do it myself. These olives here are really really excellent and there is no reason our oil should be ordinary. If the oil turns out ordinary that is because the mill isn't doing their job right. They are trying to put more olives through the process to fast at the sacrafice of quality. Trust me tonight there are two mill operators tonight doing their very best to turn our olives into fantastic oil. Tomorrow we will have the results and I am quite anxious to see the results. The thing is I don't want them as my enemy, their objectives are different than mine and somebody has to yield. They make more money the faster they can shoot olives throught he system, we make more money the higher quality our oil is. They need us but we also need them. I made such a fuss that I think our needs are going to come out on top, we'll see tomorrow. I probably repeated myelsef like six times in this post but I'm all wound up about it. Why should I settle for ordinary when with proper milling I can get extrodinary? Why should I accept a lower yield when if they would run it slow and long I can get a better yield?
I'm not sure where we are at with our restaurant sale in USA. We might get an offer very soon but maybe not. That really sucks and he both my husband and myself very concerned about our financial future. I know we have asset and we will come out of the current situation but I do not feel comfortable at all right now. I follow through with that at night and during the day jsut concentrate ont he harvest. My sister gave me some wise words years ago. She said not to get worked up over things you have no control over. I don't ahve any control over if we get an offer on our restaurant or not so I am not going to stress over it. it is listed it is getting lots of showings and if this current negotiation doesn't pop then in a few weeks we might drop the price. For the moment we are holding fast. I gotta stick by what my sister days, "Don't get all worked up over things you cannont control"
Well this post has been quite a stress releiver for me I was stressed about our Bouteillan oil but after writing it all out hre on TBN I am calmer about it. I bet tomorrow I have two great pressings of our oil
Well I seemed to have pulled it off!! And just remember I can barely speak the language and when I do speak it it is all mangled. But I do understand almost always what I am hearing. So any way I have 2 mills now literally sucking my you know what trying to beat the other mill and to please me. I was very sensitive to the fact that if I did this wrong they both would be p*ssed off at me and neither one would take any care at all of our olives. I really was worried that int he end neither one of them would want to "deal" with me. I handled all my conversations with this in mind and in the end they are kind of fighting over us, he-he-he as Eddie Walker would say.
Saturday morning I went to our old mill and the moulinere canme out to talk to me. The first thing I did was open up a tank and stick my finger in and taste it, um-um it was good. The we talked yields and he said he didn't knwo the yields but the quantities were clearly marked on the tanks so I could figure that out on my own. My old mill, so aggravating closes at noon then re-opens at 3pm. This is really inconvenient. So first thing Saturday morning I picked up the oil from the old mill, and took it home. I used a hand pump and pumped it into our stainless steel tanks in our basement. Then I tapped a 1/4 iter small bottle and marked it number 3. When I did the calculations our old mill provided a yield of 13.99% by weight of the oil Then I hand cranked out some oil form the new mills first batch at a 10% yield and labeled that bottle number 1. Then I hand cranked out a bottle from batch number 2 of our new mill at 12.5% yield and labeld that bottle #2. Then I put my nad pump, an extra bottle and a funnel in the small car and drove over to the new mill.
The father waved to me as I drove in and I KNOW he noticed I was in the small car and did not have olives with me. I was all set to crank out bottle number 4 from last nights pressing and see how it went. So I go in and go to where my tanks of oil should be and they are empty. I go outside and look at our 1,000 liter tank and there is no change. So now I look for Christine the Mill manager. She sadly tells me that her husband did not press our olives last night. She was ticked off and said her husband was not respecting her planning and she showed me the lsit she left him and we were on the list. So I look at her and say, "Well from the exact same trees I brought you 2 pallet boxes of olives and I took 2 pallet boxes over to our old mill. I have the oil from our old mill and we got 13.99% yield. Before I bring you any more olives I want to know what my yield will be on these specific olives so I can compare." She again says she is sorry they were not pressed, so i ask, "Well can you press them right now? I cna't bring you any more olives until I see what the yield is on the 2 pallets from yesterday." To my amazement she hopes on her lift truck and pulls in my 2 pallets of olives and the workers immediatly dump them and the milling process begins.
I wait for no customers to be in the mill and have her try bottle numbers 1,2 and 3. Bottles 1 & 2 were from her mill bottle number 3 is from our old mill. Well as it turns out she also had to agree that bottle number 3 had the best flavor additionally it had the highest yield. I told her that i was waiting to decide where I should bring my olives and when they were done pressing to call me with the yield and I left. The really really good thing is she totally understood she was not angry with me at all. Not at all and that is what I wanted. I really really can't stand the manager at our old mill and only wanted them to provide very close to what I could get at my old mill adn really I wanted to stay with them.
BUT I had olives in cases, I ahd no numbers form my current mill so when I got home I started hauling olives to our old mill. I did not have time to wait fro the current mills yield. Finally while I was out hauling olives about 7pm she called and talked to my hsuband and said that they got a yield of 15.5% but the flavor was not the same, the flavor was not as good as our old mill. She was "man" or "woman" enough if you will, to admit it. The difference in flavor is very very small and you would really have to be an expert to find it but both she and I knew it. The normal consumer would not know why but they would prefer the flavor from our old mill. It is very small but it is there. What it is is that the flavor form our old mill is more aromatic and less vegetal. Not much but it is there.
So Saturday night I knew it was going to happen, I run into the manager I really detest at the old mill and he rightfully gives me the cold shoulder which is what I was expectiong. i told him I wanted Norbert to press our olives and he said that wouldn't be until Monday. When you pick on Saturday is okay to press on Monday but getting them pressed Saturday night or Sunday is a lot better. So I ask him if closing is really exactly at 7pm since I ahve another round trip to make. He is giving me the cold shoulder and says, "Well 5 minutes after 7 but that is it!" I drive home quick but safe and thenkfully my husband is outside right by the olvies so he loads them real quick and I made it back to the mill by 7:03.
Now Sunday we bring back 3 more pallet boxes of olives and today I get a big surprise. The manger who I absolutly detest is sucking my backside big time. As soon as I pull up he tells me, "Your oil will be done in 8 minutes." Yesterday he told me they would not press our saturday olives until Monday and I show up Sunday night at 5pm and our oil is done. Now he is into the game, now he wants to beat the other mill. He askes me what their yields were and I tell him. So then we calcualte the yields from the oil in front of me and it comes out at 15.8% even better than Fridays pressing.
I was really honest with him when I say him Saturday night, I told him, "Olivier it is really hard for me to come back here, really hard. But I got such poor yields at our other mill that I had to compare and I ahve to admit the yield is much higher here and the flavor is better" So Sunday he is like my new best friend. Really I can't stand the guy but you know what when it comes to our oil I can suck it up and do what I need to have the best oil. If it takes going back to our old mill on my knees I'll do it. I don't like doing it but I am not going to let my pride become more important than producing the best oil. My husband and I work all year for this moment and we cna't afford to turn in great olives to a mill and get back ordinary oil. It is crazy with the storage because our big 1,000 tank is at our current mill and I'm taking the olvies now to our old mill and hauling it home in 60 liter tanks. Soon we will run out of storage in our home stainless steel tanks and I'll ahve to make sure we have enough 60 liter tanks to hold it all. One thing I won't do is mix these two oils. The best Bouteillan is going to be tottled and sold as pure Bouteillan, the very slightly (and honestly on a scale of 1 to ten we are talking about .5 in difference) lesser grade Bouteillan we will put in our blended oil. There the flavors are blended so this very small difference won't really affect the blend, but on a pure varietal I could taste it.
Our current mill understand that I am going to our old mill and she is okay with that and is not bearing any kind of grudge. I am welcome back there any time, they want us back. For the Aglandau without telling our current mill, my first load of Aglandau when we pick it late this week I am going to take to our old mill and get the flavor and the yield. Then I am going to take a full load to our current mill anc check them out also but I am not going to be telling them. If I did that I am afraid then I would really have and enemy. I do it on the sly. Our 1,000 liter storage tank for our Aglandau is at our current mill and this olive presses real good and is not near as "fussy" as the grosanne nor the Bouteillan so baring any huge surprises I will go back to them probably.
I can't take this much drama. We have so much going on on our end jsut picking the fruit, getting everybody fed and a bed and keeping enough food in the house is more than we can handle. it seems like all I do is go to the mill and stop at the grocery store, wake up and repeat. Then at night there is the selling of the USA restaurant going on, this little diversion where I can get it out on TBN is what cools me down at the end of the night. I gotta go no though. My dad needs his eye drops and he is well enough to start working in the fields again tomorrow. He is VERY happy he can do some harvest work. Sweeping the floors and cleaning our tanks is not the same as beign out int he field and working with the crew, that is what he lives for all year long. This makes his year when he can come and actually work on the harvest. My dad needs his eye drops so that is it for me for the night. Oh but that Bouteillan olive oil, lip smack, yum yum it is GREAT! Now that is what puts a smile on my face. it makes my job of sales 1,000 times easier when we make oil like we are currently amking. The oil practically sells itself.
And just remember I can barely speak the language and when I do speak it it is all mangled. But I do understand almost always what I am hearing. So any way I have 2 mills now literally sucking my you know what trying to beat the other mill and to please me. I was very sensitive to the fact that if I did this wrong they both would be p*ssed off at me and neither one would take any care at all of our olives. I really was worried that int he end neither one of them would want to "deal" with me. I handled all my conversations with this in mind and in the end they are kind of fighting over us, he-he-he as Eddie Walker would say.Saturday morning I went to our old mill and the moulinere canme out to talk to me. The first thing I did was open up a tank and stick my finger in and taste it, um-um it was good. The we talked yields and he said he didn't knwo the yields but the quantities were clearly marked on the tanks so I could figure that out on my own. My old mill, so aggravating closes at noon then re-opens at 3pm. This is really inconvenient. So first thing Saturday morning I picked up the oil from the old mill, and took it home. I used a hand pump and pumped it into our stainless steel tanks in our basement. Then I tapped a 1/4 iter small bottle and marked it number 3. When I did the calculations our old mill provided a yield of 13.99% by weight of the oil Then I hand cranked out some oil form the new mills first batch at a 10% yield and labeled that bottle number 1. Then I hand cranked out a bottle from batch number 2 of our new mill at 12.5% yield and labeld that bottle #2. Then I put my nad pump, an extra bottle and a funnel in the small car and drove over to the new mill.
The father waved to me as I drove in and I KNOW he noticed I was in the small car and did not have olives with me. I was all set to crank out bottle number 4 from last nights pressing and see how it went. So I go in and go to where my tanks of oil should be and they are empty. I go outside and look at our 1,000 liter tank and there is no change. So now I look for Christine the Mill manager. She sadly tells me that her husband did not press our olives last night. She was ticked off and said her husband was not respecting her planning and she showed me the lsit she left him and we were on the list. So I look at her and say, "Well from the exact same trees I brought you 2 pallet boxes of olives and I took 2 pallet boxes over to our old mill. I have the oil from our old mill and we got 13.99% yield. Before I bring you any more olives I want to know what my yield will be on these specific olives so I can compare." She again says she is sorry they were not pressed, so i ask, "Well can you press them right now? I cna't bring you any more olives until I see what the yield is on the 2 pallets from yesterday." To my amazement she hopes on her lift truck and pulls in my 2 pallets of olives and the workers immediatly dump them and the milling process begins.
I wait for no customers to be in the mill and have her try bottle numbers 1,2 and 3. Bottles 1 & 2 were from her mill bottle number 3 is from our old mill. Well as it turns out she also had to agree that bottle number 3 had the best flavor additionally it had the highest yield. I told her that i was waiting to decide where I should bring my olives and when they were done pressing to call me with the yield and I left. The really really good thing is she totally understood she was not angry with me at all. Not at all and that is what I wanted. I really really can't stand the manager at our old mill and only wanted them to provide very close to what I could get at my old mill adn really I wanted to stay with them.
BUT I had olives in cases, I ahd no numbers form my current mill so when I got home I started hauling olives to our old mill. I did not have time to wait fro the current mills yield. Finally while I was out hauling olives about 7pm she called and talked to my hsuband and said that they got a yield of 15.5% but the flavor was not the same, the flavor was not as good as our old mill. She was "man" or "woman" enough if you will, to admit it. The difference in flavor is very very small and you would really have to be an expert to find it but both she and I knew it. The normal consumer would not know why but they would prefer the flavor from our old mill. It is very small but it is there. What it is is that the flavor form our old mill is more aromatic and less vegetal. Not much but it is there.
So Saturday night I knew it was going to happen, I run into the manager I really detest at the old mill and he rightfully gives me the cold shoulder which is what I was expectiong. i told him I wanted Norbert to press our olives and he said that wouldn't be until Monday. When you pick on Saturday is okay to press on Monday but getting them pressed Saturday night or Sunday is a lot better. So I ask him if closing is really exactly at 7pm since I ahve another round trip to make. He is giving me the cold shoulder and says, "Well 5 minutes after 7 but that is it!" I drive home quick but safe and thenkfully my husband is outside right by the olvies so he loads them real quick and I made it back to the mill by 7:03.
Now Sunday we bring back 3 more pallet boxes of olives and today I get a big surprise. The manger who I absolutly detest is sucking my backside big time. As soon as I pull up he tells me, "Your oil will be done in 8 minutes." Yesterday he told me they would not press our saturday olives until Monday and I show up Sunday night at 5pm and our oil is done. Now he is into the game, now he wants to beat the other mill. He askes me what their yields were and I tell him. So then we calcualte the yields from the oil in front of me and it comes out at 15.8% even better than Fridays pressing.
I was really honest with him when I say him Saturday night, I told him, "Olivier it is really hard for me to come back here, really hard. But I got such poor yields at our other mill that I had to compare and I ahve to admit the yield is much higher here and the flavor is better" So Sunday he is like my new best friend. Really I can't stand the guy but you know what when it comes to our oil I can suck it up and do what I need to have the best oil. If it takes going back to our old mill on my knees I'll do it. I don't like doing it but I am not going to let my pride become more important than producing the best oil. My husband and I work all year for this moment and we cna't afford to turn in great olives to a mill and get back ordinary oil. It is crazy with the storage because our big 1,000 tank is at our current mill and I'm taking the olvies now to our old mill and hauling it home in 60 liter tanks. Soon we will run out of storage in our home stainless steel tanks and I'll ahve to make sure we have enough 60 liter tanks to hold it all. One thing I won't do is mix these two oils. The best Bouteillan is going to be tottled and sold as pure Bouteillan, the very slightly (and honestly on a scale of 1 to ten we are talking about .5 in difference) lesser grade Bouteillan we will put in our blended oil. There the flavors are blended so this very small difference won't really affect the blend, but on a pure varietal I could taste it.
Our current mill understand that I am going to our old mill and she is okay with that and is not bearing any kind of grudge. I am welcome back there any time, they want us back. For the Aglandau without telling our current mill, my first load of Aglandau when we pick it late this week I am going to take to our old mill and get the flavor and the yield. Then I am going to take a full load to our current mill anc check them out also but I am not going to be telling them. If I did that I am afraid then I would really have and enemy. I do it on the sly. Our 1,000 liter storage tank for our Aglandau is at our current mill and this olive presses real good and is not near as "fussy" as the grosanne nor the Bouteillan so baring any huge surprises I will go back to them probably.
I can't take this much drama. We have so much going on on our end jsut picking the fruit, getting everybody fed and a bed and keeping enough food in the house is more than we can handle. it seems like all I do is go to the mill and stop at the grocery store, wake up and repeat. Then at night there is the selling of the USA restaurant going on, this little diversion where I can get it out on TBN is what cools me down at the end of the night. I gotta go no though. My dad needs his eye drops and he is well enough to start working in the fields again tomorrow. He is VERY happy he can do some harvest work. Sweeping the floors and cleaning our tanks is not the same as beign out int he field and working with the crew, that is what he lives for all year long. This makes his year when he can come and actually work on the harvest. My dad needs his eye drops so that is it for me for the night. Oh but that Bouteillan olive oil, lip smack, yum yum it is GREAT! Now that is what puts a smile on my face. it makes my job of sales 1,000 times easier when we make oil like we are currently amking. The oil practically sells itself.
dmccarty
Super Star Member
Wow Rox you have your work cut out. Its a shame you about the mills.
Its seems fair to make them compete against each other. Obviously the taste is important but so is the yield. Just a little bit means more money. I'm surprised that the oil tastes different between the two mills.
You really need your own mill to get your oil the way you want it. But that means more money and I would assume more workers and that has to be more headaches.
Good Luck,
Dan
Its seems fair to make them compete against each other. Obviously the taste is important but so is the yield. Just a little bit means more money. I'm surprised that the oil tastes different between the two mills.
You really need your own mill to get your oil the way you want it. But that means more money and I would assume more workers and that has to be more headaches.
Good Luck,
Dan
