Chianti Classico Vino e Olio

The other day we took field trip to the school with our Italian teacher Metilda Zampi, to the famed Chianti Classico wine and oil production centers. Metilda's husbands family is part of the co op that makes up these factories and being from Tuscany, Metilda knows lots about tuscan wine and oil. We took an hour long bus ride that reminded us how much we love trains before we arrived at the oil mill.

The oil mill produced olive oil from olives grown in the Chianti Classico region of Chianti. Chianti is an area in Tuscany where chianti wine is produced. Chianti Classico is an even smaller area within Chianti. Characterized by it's hilly terrain, good soil and hot, dry summer climate, it is  perfect place for growing the sweet grapes and olives for wine and oil. Napa valley in California and places in Australia have similar climates but different soil and thus, different grapes.

Trucks from the farms bring the olives  (with branches still attached) up to this dock.

The olives from the trucks are put into this big collection area as try go through 2 machines to separate many of the branches and leaves from the olives.

The olives then go into these big metal carts that are sorted by farm. Unlike wine, the olives from different farms are not mixed together. 

Nothing from the olive is wasted. Leaves get sucked up and sent to a big leaf pile an branches get turned to sawdust. They sell the byproducts as biofuel.

The unloading area

Olives marked by farm

The olives get washed with this machine.

The olives are then pushed into this large mixer that grinds them up into a rough paste.

Olive paste

After the olives get turned into the paste they are spun around super fast in this machine. They are mixed with water and when the machine stops spinning, the oil rises as the water and paste settles.

The oil is then pumped out through that grate where it is pumped into a second machine for even further purification. Notice the bright green color. Olive oil has this color when it is new.

The olive oil empties into this vat and there is foam from being spun so fast.

From the foamy vat, the oil goes through a tube into a basement area where it passes through a final paper filter.

From the paper filters, the oil is pumped into big metal containers with the farm the oil came from on them. There they sit until they are bottled.

Here, they only use the oil from the first "pressing" of the olives for the best possible "extra virgin" olive oil. Some places will take the leftover olive paste and hot press it to get a lot more oil that isn't extra virgin. Here, the leftover olive paste is sent outside into a giant pool and sold as biofuel.

When the distributors are ready, the olive oil is bottled and sent out right from here. From 100 kilos of olives they will get about 15 kilos of olive oil. This olive oil is expensive but it is some of the best in the world and the production always sells out. Metilda explained to us that the olives are only harvested in the late fall. This olive oil mill is only open for about 2 months out of the year, during which time, it runs around the clock to get the olive oil on the shelf while still fresh and green. As the oil ages the color changes from green to yellow but the taste and quality of the oil remain the same. It was neat to see the olive oil production.

After the oil mill tour, we went to go visit the Chianti Classico wine factory, where world renowned Chianti Classico is 

The Chianti Classico factory is one of biggest wine factories in Italy and it is a large Co Op. It started in the 1960s with a group of about 20 vineyards and farmers who decided to band together to stay competitive with rising big wine companies. The farmers would mix their grapes to produce just a few different wines instead of each farmer making several wines. What started with around 20 farmers today has grown into over 100. They still use the same building however.

We were a little late for the grape season, but Metilda explained everything with the help of her friend Julia who worked at the factory. Trucks come full of grapes from the farms and they are weighed to see how much grapes they are bringing before they dump all of their grapes into this machine. The grapes go through a few machines that separate the stems and the leaves from them and a vinolier selects which grapes will go into what wine.

The grapes are processed a bit more before being put into massive holding tanks. These walls are actually huge tanks full of aging wine! Pretty cool!

The building is split up into 4 floors and a basement. On the top floor, they age the vinsanto "dessert wine" in special oak casks. Vinsanto ages well with lots of temperature change and lots of time. The longer it ages, the better. The other floors  have tanks with wine in them.

The wine is moved from tank to tank with a powerful pump and big tubes.

Tubes run from one floor to the next, transporting the wine to where it needs to go.

Like the oil, the wine also goes through paper filters.

Then the wine goes down to the basement wine cellar where the aging of the wine happens.

The aging of the wines happens in barrels big and small and also in big metal tanks. Depending on the wine, the aging will happen in both barrels and metal tanks. The big barrels behind us last several lifetimes and get the insides sanded down to reveal fresh oak. They have been here since the founding of the Co Op.

There are also smaller barrels that are cheaper and last about 4 years. The smaller oak barrels age the wine differently than the larger barrels. 

There were LOTS of big wine barrels

These big metal tanks are also used in the aging process. Unless it is Vinsanto, Chianti Classico wine is only aged for about 2 years before it is bottled and sold .

This part was full of pallets of different wines all wrapped, boxed, bottled and ready to be shipped.

We also got to see the area where the wine was bottled. This really made it a factory.

The bottles are bought from a bottle factory (those are cool places).

The bottles go on a conveyor belt and are cleaned and then filled. The sound of bottles clinking together and hydraulic machines fills the bottling area.

Corks! There were bags and bags of them next to this machine.

Wrapper machine. I think it uses heat and pressurized air to put the wrappers on the bottles. The wrappers go on instantly.

Label machine. This thing was really cool to watch. It stuck the labels on and the bottles rotated as they orbited around a loop of brushes and squeegees that pressed the sticker around the entire bottle. The stickers were applied the exact same way on every bottle.

This machine put the bottles into boxes. There was also a machine dedicated to unfolding the boxes and forming them. The boxing machine filled 9 boxes of wine in one motion. From there, the boxes were closed by another machine, then they went by conveyor belt onto a pallet and when the pallet was full, it automatically was wrapped and set into the holding area where a forklift would place it where it needed to go until it was ready to be shipped. It was a really cool system, one that I definitely would call a factory.

After the wine tour, we got a 4 course Tuscan meal with wine and oil tasting. A professional olive oil taster told is about the oil and the descriptions he gave us about the oil we had were pretty accurate. We got oil straight from the mill from this year. It wasn't even ready to be sold yet and they didn't have the 2013 labels for the bottles yet. The good olive oil produced here stood out an had more flavor when compared to the traditional cheap olive oil. Like the grapes for wine, olives are best grown in certain regions and are better in dry conditions. The wine we tried was also very good Chianti and Chianti Classico. I had been buying similar wines before and now I know about these ones. It was a good day in Chianti.