There’s an art to making olive oil, especially olive oil that’s good enough to be classified as “extra virgin,” and local start-up Florida Olive Farms plans to bring such high quality oil right here to Suwannee County. Farm operators and brothers Jonathan and Stephen Carter hope to provide a purer alternative to the substandard “extra virgin” olive oils in markets today. 

Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) is oil that has been extracted from olives by crushing them without the use of heat or solvents.

“The United States imports about 98 percent of the olive oil we consume, and the vast majority of that olive oil is not really even EVOO,” said Jonathan. “So it’ll be labeled ‘extra virgin’ at the grocery stores, but it typically isn’t.”

Armed with this knowledge and with the proof of successful olive farms in Georgia, the Carter brothers saw an opportunity to start their own olive farm, provide a high quality product that is rarely found in the U.S., and have something to fall back on in their retirement years.

“We got excited about it because it was something new,” said Stephen.

The Carters’ family background is in timber farming in the North Florida and South Georgia area, and their own backgrounds are in the computer software business. They quickly had to learn that crafting an olive oil goes beyond the technology used in the process.

The Carters sought out the advice of master artisan Gianni Stefanini, owner of Apollo Olive Oil in California, and a team of olive mill experts from the Italian company Mori-TEM led by Guido Testi. The Mori-TEM team even flew out from Italy to help the Carters hook up, calibrate and learn how to operate their mill equipment this August and September.

The Carter brothers chose to locate off Newbern Road in Suwannee County since their parents own property nearby and because the sandy soil in the area is very conducive to olive growing, according to Jonathan.

“From my understanding, olives are a lot like grapes when you make wine; they kind of absorb things from the natural environment,” he said. “So they will have a slightly different flavor profile [from other olive oils].”

The brothers currently own a 40-acre plot with 33 planted acres holding a little over 20,000 olive trees, 90 percent of them being the arbequina variety.

“Arbequina is a Spanish variety and it’s specifically designed for what’s called ‘super high-density,’” Jonathan explained. “That’s where we pack them in a little tighter. They will grow together like a big hedgerow eventually and we use a mechanical harvester, like they do with grapes and blueberries, to drive over the top and harvest the olives.”

They also have Greek koroneiki olive trees and Spanish arbosana olive trees.

The Carters first planted their farm in 2012 and added the Italian-imported olive oil mill in 2014. The variety of olive trees the Carters have typically take about five years to get to full production, but the trees can produce fruit in about three years, Jonathan said. They plan to harvest their olives in fall 2016, but this year they want to go ahead and get started with oil production using other farms’ olives.

The Carters anticipate producing up to 150 tons of olives per harvest in the future. They plan to make their own oil and contract their oil mill services to other growers in Florida and Georgia.

With a mix of olive varieties and olives at different stages of ripeness, the Carters can make many different EVOO flavor profiles.

“The olive will go from a green to a purple to a dark black as it ages,” said Stephen. “Those different colors all have different flavors. So over time, you would harvest some greens and keep them separate from the purples, and keep them separate from the dark ones, and then you would mix them in different ratios. Greens will be real spicy, peppery and bitter. The purple or the darker ones will have a sweeter, buttery flavor.”

After getting washed in water, the entire olive gets crushed together – pits, skin and all – by Mori-TEM’s bladed hammer mill, which is more gentle to the fruit than a standard hammer mill.

“The concept behind this company that we bought our mill from is all about minimizing abuse to the fruit and minimizing oxidation from air getting into the process,” said Jonathan.

The reason for this, as artisan Gianni Stefanini explained, is that the olive’s antioxidants will attack oxygen as soon as they are exposed to it, decreasing the amount of antioxidants in the resulting oil. Heat and light pose similar threats to the oil’s antioxidants and health benefits.

“Antioxidants are the healthy part of the olive oil,” said Stefanini. “There is vitamin E, there are polyphenols. A good EVOO is able to prevent the formation of cancer or can help in curing cancer or is very beneficial for the blood system. It helps clean your arteries and veins and helps the heart to last longer and work better. It helps the regeneration of the liver, it helps the digestive system, the lymphatic system. But in order to achieve these goals, the oil has to have a high amount of antioxidants.”

After the olives are crushed, their paste is sent to a mixer and then to a decanter centrifuge. The decanter spins at about 3800 RPM in order to separate the oil from the water and flesh of the olive. The heavier bits spin to the outside while the oil is skimmed from the inside of the decanter’s tube.

“About 15 percent of the olive is oil, so about 50-55 percent is water and the balance of it is the actual olive – the pit, the skin, the flesh,” Jonathan explained.

After the paste is separated, the leftover flesh and water, a mixture called “pomace,” is pumped outside of the mill.

The oil is then pumped into a paper filtration system, an extra step the Carter brothers have invested in to up their product’s quality.

If all goes well after this detailed oil-making process, the end result will be a true high quality extra virgin olive oil. The Carter brothers recommend high quality EVOO should be consumed within two years of the time it was made, because it loses antioxidants the longer it sits. Consumers may find it tastes very different from what’s on supermarket shelves – but in a good way, the Carters noted. Florida Olive Farms is dedicated to bringing this healthy, quality product to Florida starting in Suwannee County.

For more information on Florida Olive Farms, please visit www.floridaolivefarms.com, e-mail info@floridaolivefarms.com, or call 386-643-4855.