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The Moulin de Callas is a small olive-oil mill in the village of Callas, northeast of Draguignan in the Var department. The current mill uses modern equipment housed in a low building just above the original mill.
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Nearby: |
Bargemon 6 km |
Châteaudouble 11 km |
Claviers 4.5 km |
Comps-sur-Artuby 26 km |
Draguignan 16 km |
Fayence 25 km |
Figanières 6 km |
Frejus 32 km |
Grasse 46 km |
Seillans 18 km |
Trinité Chapel 4 km |
Below: |
The Process |
The original 18th-century (1746) mill is still there [Photo 2], now the owners' house, with the moulin's store and gift shop attached. In this photo the ancient mill's waterwheel can be seen at the right corner of the house (at the edge of the road). The modern mill equipment is in the red, flat-topped building at the back-right.
The Moulin de Callas has been run by the Bérenguier for 4 generations, since 1928. They produce an olive oil called "fruité vert" and classs as an extra virgin (vierge exra) olive oil.
The back room of the gift shop has even more items for sale, including local wines and their own olive oil, with a tasting area. This room still has the ancient mill stone and other original oil-mill equipment in place, only partly hidden by the products on display.
"Extra Virgin" olive oil has an acidity level below 0.8 percent. "Virgin" olive oil has an acidity level between 0.8 and 2.0 percent.
Fruité vert is a type of olive oil with a slightly herbal aroma. The oil must come from olives that have not been stocked before being milled. A fruité vert olive oil will become more mild with time.
The Process
For an quick overview of the process, step through the photo gallery photos once before reading the description below.
Arrival
The freshly gathered olives arrive at the mill from the nearby olive orchards [Photo 4, Photo 5]. About 5 kg of olives are required to make 1 litre of olive oil.
The olives are started on the milling process quickly, within a few hours or a few days at the most. If the olives sit around long enough they will begin to ferment on their own.
1 - Cleaning (Effoliage)
The first step of the process is to clean the olives of leaves, twigs and other debris from the orchard. In [Photo 6] you see a bin of olives being tipped into the hopper of the cleaning maching. A water bath and forced air vaccuming separates out the debris. Photo 7 shows the clean olives as they are about to be conveyed into the mill building and into the grinding machine.
2 - Grinding (Broyage)
In this stage, the olives, pits and all, are ground up into a pasty mixture. The front of the grinding machine is visible in the right-hand corner of Photo 8. The ground-up mixture is pumped through small hoses to the mixing machine.
3 - Mixing (Malaxage)
The olive-mill mixing machines are the long machines in the center of Photo 8. These mixing machines uses spiral blades to blend the ground olives into a smooth consistancy [Photo 9] before being sent to the separator.
4 - Solid-Liquid Separation (Centrifugation horizontal)
The separator machine (far left of Photo 8) is a horizontal cetrifuge that separates the oily liquid from the solid part of the olive paste. The liquid part is pumped to the final filtering machine while the solid part is sent away to be re-cycled.
5 - Final Filtering (Centrifugation vertical)
The now-liquid olive oil passes through a vertical centrifugal filter [Photo 10] to extract the water from the oil.
At this final stage, the oils from different olive batches can be blended to produce the desired type of olive oil. The Moulin de Callas, however, produces only one type of olive oil, called "fruité vert".
Recycling
The solid part of the olive-paste mixture, once separated from the oil, is loaded into trailers and hauled back to the olive orchards to be used as a natural fertalizer, completing the orchard-to-orchard cycle.
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Photo gallery of 11 photos for Callas Mill
