“I see.” Up to this point, I wasn’t confused. Now it grows a bit foggy, at least for a pea brain such as mine, which is quietly trying to multiply twenty by twelve and a half!
Until today, I have always blithely assumed that so many kilos of pressed olives liquified into so many liters of oil. When I mention this, Michel nods his agreement but René and the staff of the moulin shake their heads gravely. “Mais, non,” they tell us. “The production of oil is valued and measured by weight.”
What!
One liter of oil, we learn, weighs nine hundred grams, or nine tenths of a kilo.
Lord!
If the fruit is ripe and healthy and plump, therefore rich in oil, it is hoped that a measure (twelve and a half kilos) will achieve 2.7 kilos of oil which, divided by nine hundred, translates at approximately three liters of oil. In other words, after a phenomenally complicated calculation, the ideal is to produce fruit which will yield three liters of oil for every twelve and a half kilos of olives, or sixty liters for every “mound.”
Phew! We are exhausted, my head is spinning and it is not yet half past eight in the morning. I am about to ask why the system is calculated in such a mind-bogglingly difficult way when Michel grabs me by the shirtsleeve and says, “While we’re here, chérie, why don’t we buy some of their tapénade?” Anything to stop me from further scrambling our brains.
To reach the level where the mill is operating, René ushers us back out of the shop onto the cobbled street, through another door to the left of the one we have just exited and down a rickety flight of narrow wooden stairs. I feel as if I am going backward in time. Added to which, the temperature is falling. At the mill level, it is almost arctic. Every exhalation is visible.
We have gone backward in time.
As we enter the mill, our senses are socked by the thumping and turning of a whole array of machines, and the air is so thick and heavy with the dense aroma of freshly pulped olive paste you feel you want to shove it off you, just like a blanket. At eight-thirty in the morning, it makes my head reel, as does the rough red wine handed to us to accompany thick wedges of locally baked bread topped with ham cured from a pig reared and slaughtered in the village. It is a peasant’s breakfast offered to us by a wan girl of no more than fourteen, who is accompanied by her brother of about nine.
Once we have been fed, the children retreat politely to stand guard at the table groaning with the family produce. Silently, arms at their sides like small soldiers, they await the next batch of ravenous oléiculteurs. René is battling against the din to explain the mechanics of the machinery, but I am more fascinated by the children. They look like waifs, serious-faced with dark penetrating eyes that, though kindly, might have witnessed a thousand hard seasons. It seems incredible to me that our farm is situated somewhere equidistant between this world and the gaudy glitz and escroquerie of Cannes.
The noise down here is impossible. I cannot hear or understand a word that is being spoken. René talks on, lips moving. I have no idea what he is explaining. I turn to the miller, who says nothing. He has returned to his work. Both he and his assistant are wrapped in scarves knotted at the neck and substantial jackets, although they are moving continuously, shunting trays of mashed olive paste and enormous bottles filled with the freshly pressed green oil. All around me, machines are milling, thrumming, spewing out liquid or excreting dried paste. A fire is roaring behind a small glass window, no bigger than a portable television screen. It is fueled by dried olive waste. Each ancient machine feeds the next, it seems. They are interconnected as though it were some enormous Rube Goldberg invention which today, according to the miller—who beckons us over into a corner away from the racket—is taking four and a half kilos of olives to press one liter of virgin oil. Most of these early-season fruits are not quite ripe enough, he explains. The fruit arriving after Christmas, when it has had longer on the trees to plumpen and grow black, should be better and produce the optimum.
We are led through to a cave where labeled bottles glow with oil growing gold instead of green as the sediment settles. They await the return of their owners, who will cart them away and store them safely in cool, darkened depositories. This mill, I see, is rigorous about making certain that no grower’s olives are mixed with another’s if they are a single-estate press such as ours will be.
I am fascinated by how the remains are put to good purpose. Olive oil soap is made from the residue of the third or even fourth pressings, and the desiccated paste is burned in the fire which heats the water and operates as the central heating system, such as it is here. Ecologically speaking, the olive is an all-rounder. Nothing goes to waste. Every last drop of oil is wrung out of the fruit, and only in the making of tapénade is the pit extracted and thrown away.
Before we set off for the second mill, the longer-established of the two, everybody shakes hands enthusiastically. “Next time, Christophe will be here,” we are assured. He is the patron and has “parti pour faire la chasse.” Gone hunting. There is much kissing and backslapping and promises to meet again soon. They enjoy the idea that foreigners take an interest in this most venerable of trades.
“Beaucoup d’Americains visitent içi,” we are told. Thumbs and fingers are rubbed together, heads nod gravely, all to express the sums of money handed over by the Americans in return for trinkets, souvenirs and glossy books detailing the history of the olive and Provençal life.
“And the English?” I ask hopefully.
As one, the family shakes their heads. I appear to have touched upon a sensitive and sorry subject. “Mais, non,” returns Madame in a conspiratorial tone. “Les Anglais have no interest in anything!”
THE SECOND MOULIN IS an altogether different affair. Situated in a field at the end of a deserted lane in the middle of nowhere, it was founded in 1706. It looks as though it originally must have been a peasant farm with an outbarn, which at some early stage was transformed into a mill and never decorated since. The crumbling outer walls of the edifice are of a washed pink which is popular in certain parts here but which I feel belongs more comfortably in Suffolk. First impression: there is little about this place aside from the surrounding countryside and mountainous backdrop, that is welcoming.
One step in the door and we are directly in the mill, a cavernous space, with a room temperature barely above above 40°F. It is sunless and gloomy. There is no shop here, no tourist attractions of any sort, which rather pleases me. As before, we are instantly knocked backward by that dense, palpable odor of crushed olives. Here, though, there is no offer of comforting slabs of bread and ham and red wine to douse our senses. There are no trimmings whatsoever. The place has one function: the cold-pressing of extra-virgin oil.
The pressing wheel and floor have been honed out of massive slabs of craggy stone rendered smooth by centuries of use. Somehow, the heavy stone adds to the keen wintry atmosphere. I exhale and watch my breath rise like smoke. Ahead of us are two farmers engaged in business with the lady miller, or the miller’s wife, who appears to be discussing their accounts. René, because he has visited here only once before, is not quite sure who she is. We are all strangers, which suits me because it allows a sense of discovery.
René guides our attention toward the stone wheel that crushes the fruit. It is so imposing, almost monolithic, that I shiver at the thought of getting any body parts trapped beneath it. It is stained with what look like clumps of dark peat, but on closer inspection we see that, of course, it is coated with trapped olive paste. Passing along to another completely indescribable contraption, we find oil at its base, trickling at a snail’s pace into a dustpan-like box made of olive wood. The arrival of the oil appears to be a discreet, low-key affair; none of the slosh and flow of the last establishment or the horrendous ear-splitting noise, but then, to be fair, the machines here have completed their last pressing for the day, even though it is only a little after half past ten.
Looking closely, with René drawing our attention here and there, we learn that this sy
stem requires more fruit for less yield. It takes approximately six kilos of fruit to produce a liter of oil here, even with the ripest and richest of drupes. René closes his eyes and goes through a swift mental calculation. If we use the other moulin, Appassionata can expect, on average—depending on the weather and the harvest—to press approximately two hundred and fifty liters of oil a year. Here we would net fewer than two hundred.
“Yes, but here it is cold-pressed, extra-virgin.”
“The other, too,” he assures us.
“In any case, two hundred liters is more than sufficient for our needs,” I counter.
Michel quietly reminds me that our share would be, in the first instance, eighty-three or -four liters, while here, somewhere around sixty-five. The remainder is René’s. I glance at René, who merely shrugs.
The miller woman, who wears her gray hair slicked back in a tight, uncompromising bun, boots, a full woollen skirt and velveteen shirt, is paying us no attention, engaged as she is with her clients. They are weighing panniers of violet olives and calculating figures: the cost of the pressing, no doubt. Perhaps for the first time, I am made acutely aware of this as a business, not a dream. Olive farming and oil pressing is a livelihood, and these people are close to the land, bearing its vagaries and hardships. They cannot afford the romance that swims about in my head. I wander off to investigate further, and to be alone.
Beyond the mill, though still under the same roof, I discover a cave with storage spaces dug out of rock and cut with stone-shelved corners. It is windowless and dark. Two or three dozen glass jars cased in wicker are stored there. Each must be capable of holding fifteen or twenty liters of liquid.
“They are called bonbonnes à goulot large. In the olden days, the Romans stored their oil in tall clay jars which were originally turned or baked in Spain and then shipped to Italy. They were not dissimilar to the oval terra-cotta pots you keep in your garden and fill with flowers. These are a more modern version, if you can describe anything in here as modern.” It is René. He and Michel are once again at my side.
Some of these thick-necked demijohns, the bonbonnes, are still empty, while others have already been filled with the deep green, freshly pressed oil, which from this distance and in this crepuscular light, resembles sea-water or steeped seaweed juice. Judging by its color and the juice slipping heavily into the dustpan apparatus, the quality of the oil here is richer, more luscious and aromatic.
“I like this place better,” I whisper to Michel, who laughs and replies, “Mais, oui, chérie. The question is which mill would better suit our needs. Not which would serve us as a film set!”
“I still prefer this one,” I confirm calmly.
Outside, the morning is warming to a bright clear day, so clear that we can see the shrubby details on the surrounding hills and valleys and the snow caps on the high, distant alps. I close my eyes and inhale the fresh air, rich with the smell of pine resin. The heat of the sun against my eyelids is a comforting relief.
STROLLING BACK TO OUR car, we learn from René that there is an olive tree growing in Roquebrune which we might like to take a look at. There are several villages down here with that name, but the one he refers to is the rather glamorous Roquebrune-Cap-Martin situated, on the mountainous road between Monte Carlo and Italy. Michel knows the place. In fact, he has visited it on several occasions. Its marvelous restaurant, le Roquebrune, which has been owned and managed by the family of Mama Marinovich since its inception, has been a favorite of his for years. The village is also known for its medieval houses cut into the rocks. There, a few kilometers from Menton, the gateway to Italy, grows an olive tree believed to be a thousand years old. Who planted it? I ask. Does anyone know? Who would have looked upon it?
It is fifteen hundred years too young to be a souvenir left by the Greeks and almost a millennium too young to have been planted by the Romans during their marches north from the heart of their empire while constructing the Via Aurelia, the great highway stretching from Ventimiglia to Aix. The Romans, with Agrippa as their consul, were building roads and tracing out this land of Provincia, creating cadastral surveys and scientific mappings before the tree was ever in existence. Even Charlemagne, crowned emperor of the West in 800 A.D., preceded it, as did the Saracens, who were looting and sacking the littoral even while Charlemagne and his children were dividing up the country for their heirs.
Might it have been a peace offering to the counts of Provence from Rome?
A thousand years after the birth of Christ, somewhere around the date the tree was planted, Provence was being returned to Rome and inaugurated as part of the Holy Roman Empire. The Saracens, having created havoc and terror for a hundred years, had been conquered and driven out, and Provence, though back under the ruling thumb of Rome, was enjoying a certain independence, a bit of peace and quiet after so many centuries of strife. Alas, it was not to last. Within a century or two, the counts of Provence ceded the province to the counts of Toulouse and they to the counts of Barcelona and so the chain goes on, right up to the liberation of Provence by the Allies from the Germans in August 1944, which our friend, René, standing beside us now, bore witness to.
Still, this noble tree is believed to be one of the oldest in the world.
By what stroke of fortune has that one single specimen survived? Michel suggests we make a detour, a slightly elongated one, approximately one hundred and ten kilometers round-trip, and pay homage to this most holy of trees. This I agree to wholeheartedly. René, who does not want to come with us, bids us bon appétit and leaves us to it.
Less than an hour later, our car is swooping and turning like a bird in flight along the mountain road. It is a giddy, spectacular altitude. The endless hairpin bends on this infamous descent, then ascent, from La Turbie, with its magnificent Roman ruins, make you catch your breath when you look down to sea level and pray to God your brakes won’t fail. There’s precious little chance to enjoy the view if you are driving. Michel is at the wheel. He drives fast, but with great skill, and I am leaning out the window, unafraid, hair flying in the wind and whipping my face, eyes watering, thrilled by the panorama all around me, following the sweep of hundreds of meters of rocky face which lead dramatically to the Med.
Somewhere near here, Princess Grace of Monaco lost her life when her sports car went over the cliffside. She was killed instantly. From where I am now, you see why. The memory of that accident sobers me for an instant, and I crawl back into my seat and gaze at the rock faces towering to the left of us.
It’s then that I spot the village high above us, rising out of the stone toward a linen-blue sky. It resembles a picture from a book of fairy tales illustrated by Arthur Rackham; even more so when I realize that, perched atop its pinnacle, is a castle with a tower.
We park the car at the foot of the village in what was the ancient castle’s barbican and hike the winding lane to the vieux village. Much to our dismay, because we are starving, every single restaurant is closed. This is not about being closed for lunch. It is that time of year, la fermerture annuelle, November 15 to December 15, when so many buinesses shut up shop in preparation for the upcoming festivities; Christmas and the New Year are a busy season on the Côte d’Azur. But we are not too disappointed, even if our stomachs are rumbling. Our noontime is flooded with warm winter sunshine.
We stride and puff and arrive at a perfectly empty place, and what strikes me instantly is that there is not a soul about, though there is no sense of this as a ghost town. In the center of this pleasingly airy square is an olive tree, fenced and surrounded by benches. It is unquestionably an aged specimen and well preserved, but I had expected something more spectacular. The girth of its trunk is probably three meters which is barely more than our own trees. I stroll to the cliff’s edge and look out across the rippling water, lambent in the sunlight, toward Cap Martin and, in the other direction, to the kingdom of Monaco with its curiously out-of-place skyscrapers. Michel comes up behind me and wraps his arms around me.
“I’ve had a good look. I don’t think that’s the tree we’re after,” he says. “Let’s investigate.”
We make our way through the vieux village up a hill, down a winding stairwell—everywhere tiled and cobbled and polished with the gleaming shine of a proud housewife’s stoop—passing through Place Ernest Vincent with its obsolete prison until we spot a sign for the olivier millénaire.
“Look,” I cry.
Triumphantly, with the air of adventurers whose navigations are confirmed on track, we begin to descend. A profusion of hillside trees fluffy with green leaves similar to the willow—a variety of tamarisk, if I am not mistaken—overhang the pathway. We are plunging down a steep path. In former days a donkey trail, no doubt, used to transport victuals from the fields at sea level up to the homes carved out of the rocks. We are walking in the footsteps traced by a billion and more travelers, by soldiers, other lovers, by farmers and farmhands, to pay homage to a tree. And lo and behold, two hundred or so meters farther along, there it is, growing out of a wall on the terraced cliffside. This elephantine miracle is not fenced in. It is not on display. It is simply there. Being. Its roots, like a banyan tree’s, sprawl everywhere. Branches, roots, reaching out like an octopus, stretching, bursting its banks with the sheer determination to live, to survive. Its force is taking earth and stone with it.
Michel and I stand side by side, silenced, gazing in awe at this monumental symbol of creation. Then we spin around, seaward, to take in the view unfolding before us; flocks of starlings swoop and tack against a vigorous blue sky. Even at this precipitous height, we can hear the gentle lap of the water washing the coastal rocks and beaches so far beneath us. We incline our heads and gaze down upon the coastline, eyes eastward to the cap of St. Martin, where Yeats once spent a holiday, Queen Victoria was a regular visitor and the architect Le Corbusier drowned.
Olive Farm Page 25
