Monte Carlo olive oil is made in the traditional stone crushing method.
The most important thing: good olives make good olive oil. Olives have to be
processed as soon as possible after harvest. Our olives are taken to Frantoio
Restaurant and Press in Mill Valley within 24 hours of harvest. They have a state
of the art press and an Italian pressing master who comes from Italy every
year to supervise the crush. Frantoio Restaurant's patrons, during the crushing
season (November - December), can watch the entire olive oil making process
while enjoying an authentic contemporary Italian meal.
Thoroughly cleaning and hand picking among tons of olives to discard unwanted ones and foreign objects, it's another painstakingly step that makes Frantoio olive oils so special.
After getting washed the olives are poured into the crusher through a conveyor belt.........

....and are then crushed by 3200 lbs. of granite stone wheels for 10 to 15 minutes to pre-crush at the coldest possible temperature to promote fruitiness.


At this stage the paste is crushed a second time in a finishing hammer mill at slow revolutions for maximum extraction of polyphenals. The paste is then processed in a two-phased Pieralisi decanter of the latest generation.

Looks like liquid gold! The olive oil is finally extracted by the vertical centrifuge separator. The whole process took about 1 hour. From the initial 1/2 ton of olives only about 15 gallons of extra virgin olive oil will be produced.
 
This page is presented courtesy of
Frantoio Restaurant and Olive Mill, Mill Valley, CA