In the
year of 1560, Don Antonio de Ribera…brought with him from Seville several Olive
Plants, which he carefully saved, and put up in two great Jars, and of above a
hundred which he had brought, there were but three slips only that were alive,
the which he planted in a fruitful Soil and Valley, wherein he having also
other fruits, such as Grapes, Figs, Pomegranats and Oranges, Limes and the
like… Don Antonio de Ribera having
planted these Olive Trees in his own Land, would not afford so much as one leaf
of them to be planted in any other Ground than his own, and for security of them
he guarded them with at least one hundred Negros and thirty Dogs, which watched
his rich Plantations both by day and night; but it happening out that some
persons, more watchful than his Dogs and perhaps by the connivance or consent
of the Negros, (as is to be suspected) stole away in the night time one of the
three Olive Plants, the which in some time after, was seen to flourish and grow
in Chili… and there for the space of three Years afforded many sprouts for
divers Plantations, increasing with that prosperous success, that not the least
twig was put into the ground but which took and in a short
time became a fair Olive Tree. “The Inca” Garcilaso de la Vega 1609[1]
Thus olives arrived
in Chile, assuming that “The Inca” Garcilaso got the story right. He was writing 30 years later, and the story
surely had been told many times as the punch line, below, makes it a great
tale:
at the end of three years… the same tree was again restored and replanted in the very same place from whence it had been taken, with that secrecy, and with that dexterity returned that the master could never detect the Person who had robbed him of it.
However olives
arrived in Chile ,
they did well. Garcilaso reports that by
the time of his writing olive oil was already being exported from Chile to
Peru, and today, 400 years later, Chile exports over 12 million liters every
year, some 35-40% to the United States.
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Chilean olive oil
is among the best in the world, 99% is extra virgin, most with a total acidity
of .02% or less. Most is mild, suitable
for either salads or for cooking, but more intense varieties are available if
you look for them. In 2011 Chilean olive
oil received prizes in 10 international competitions and 13 Chilean olive oil
producers received outstanding scores in the 2012 olive oil guide Flos Olei,
two of 97/100.[2] And in contrast to the situation with
European olive oils where adulteration, fraud and mislabeling are rampant[3], Chilean
oils have been relatively free from scandal.[4]
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A
bit of history.
Although the
Spaniards who conquered Chile
had presumably grown up on a diet rich in olive oil, in Chile they
turned to a much more available alternative: beef fat, rendered from cattle that soon roamed
the central valley in vast herds. (See Eating
Chilean Beef) Chilean historian Pereira
Salas explains that “olive oil had
very restricted culinary use in Chile ,
serving only to dress salads; beef fat was adopted for cooking and is one of
the most important characteristics of Creole diet. What butter is for the French, olive oil is
for the Italian or Spaniard, beef fat was for the Chilean”.[5]
But of course there
was some production, for both oil and table olives. Unfortunately, most Chilean olive oil was
“fatty, seldom clear and very bad quality, owing to the singular manner in
which it is made,” according to French naturalist Caludio Gay, who traveled widely
and wrote authoritatively on Chile
during the 1830s and 40s.
In June or July they knock the olives to the ground with poles and then they gather them into piles for five or six days, and sometimes as much as a month, and after crushing with stones they put them a portion at a time in a bag and rub them with their hands against a sloping board with water so hot as to be very painful. The liquid is gathered in a tray or other vessel and after it has cooled the oil that floats on the water is removed with a spoon and clarified over a fire. The remaining pulp is thrown away as useless or is used as fuel for ovens, still containing a great deal of oil from the depraved way they have operated.
But there was some
good oil. Using mills like those used in Europe the Villuco hacienda, in Santiago province, produced the best oil in Chile
…five days after being harvested the olives are ground in a horse powered mill. The resulting paste is placed in sacks for pressing, first moderately in order to obtain first class oil, and later after mixing with hot water, it is given another much stronger pressing in order to obtain all the oil content, and which is sold as second and third quality.
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Moroccan olive mill (photo Jerzy Strzelecki ) & 19th Century French olive press (photo: Bid
or Buy) similar those used in Chile .
And there was great
potential. Gay thought Chilean olive
trees were greatly superior to the scrawny trees in France , and:
If Chile devoted itself intelligently to this industry it could supply all the oil the countries of the southern ocean consume and now obtain from Europe; but the tree is slow to grow, yielding a fair harvest only after 25 or 30 years, which is too much for Chileans who are always rushed to pick their fruit soon. This is surely the reason that they have planted so few trees, satisfied with those that exist to produce the oil needed for the country.[6]
By 1869 Chile had about
145,000 olive trees which could have provided only about .4 liter of oil (1 ¾
cups) per person per year.[7] Over
75% of the trees were in Ñuble Province , some 400 km south of Santiago . But it was in Santiago that the
best oil was produced, “with a perfection that puts to shame any foreign
oil. Almost all is consumed within the
country as it is greatly appreciated.”[8]
By the 1930s the
Chilean population had grown to about 5 million, but the situation was little
changed. There were some 260,000 trees, perhaps
two thousand hectares of olives, enough for only about .3 liters of oil per
person—1 ¼ cup—per year. At the same
time, Chile
was importing some three million liters of vegetable oils per year—now
including soy and cotton seed oil as well as olive. To replace this level of
imports, Chile would need some 15,000 hectares of olive trees rather than the
2,000 then planted.[9]
It didn’t
happen. By 1998, Chilean olive
plantations had only increased to 4,500 hectares, some 1.2 million liters of
olive oil were imported, and annual consumption was down to less that 1/10 of a
liter—1/5 cup-- per person.[10]
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But something else
had happened. Since 1990-91 world olive
oil consumption had increased by about 1/3 and in the United States, one of
Chile’s most important agricultural export markets, people were now using 50%
more olive oil, almost all imported. The
foodie revolution had struck! “EVOO,” catch
phrase of TV foodie Rachael
Ray was in the Oxford
American College Dictionary. Olive
oil was hot!
And
Chile noticed.
Chileans started
planting olive trees: 500 hectares more
by 2001, 7,600 more by 2006, 20,000 more by 2011 and a projected 28,000 more by
2020 for a total of 33,000 hectares. And
while domestic olive oil consumption increased to about .6 lt. a year, more
than doubling in five years, production increased over 400% and exports
increased 1100%, over ten times, to 12.5 million liters a year.[11]
Chilean olive oil today
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Olives are grown
throughout northern and central 
Arvequina olives
Photo: Willis
Orchards
Most Chilean olives
are picked using hand-held vibrating rake-like devices that shake them from the
branches onto cloths spread under the trees, although some groves are densely
planted and pruned for machine harvesting.
The photo below is part of an excellent photo essay covering the process
from Cachando
Chile: “Chilean Olive Oil:
A day on the job” by fellow blogger Margaret.
The Chile
Oliva web site explains the rest of the process: After harvest the olives are
washed and then crushed, usually within 24 hours. The result is a thick paste which is kneaded
or beaten to allow the smaller drops of oil to aggregate for easier separation.
To extract the oil the paste is spun, or the solids and liquids are separated
and spun separately. The resulting oil is centrifuged again to remove the
remaining water, and:
At this point the final product is ready for consumption. However, in order to eliminate any remaining solid residues from the previous stages, the oil goes through a filter system; right after that the final product is collected in stainless steel barrels and then packaged to be stored.
The finished
product appears on Chilean supermarket shelves, commonly holding a dozen or
more brands, at from about 4,000 CLP (US$8.00) per liter for store brands to
7,000 CLP for some of the best known name and organic brands. Virtually all is marked “extra virgin” and
most is fruity and mild.
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Chilean Olives
While olive oil has
only recently become popular, and then with a fairly limited portion of the
population, olives themselves were common and widely eaten throughout Chilean
history. Writing in the 1840s Gay
explained that:
There are two varieties of olives, a smaller one which provides oil in greater quantity and a larger one, used mainly as food. The consumption of these is very great, above all in the men’s and women’s convents. To prepare them they are pricked with a thorn and then put in a vessel of water, which is changed twice a day. Twelve to fifteen days are enough to remove all their bitterness and foul liquid, and afterwards they are preserved with salt and dry cumin. When they are to be used they are dressed with oil, vinegar, and frequently with whole or minced onion. They are always preserved when ripe and thus are black, but some curious persons also prepare green olives, as in Europe, which is not very common as they are liked by very few.[13]
While this
traditional method of preparing
olives is no longer practiced in Chile, except perhaps by hobbyists for
home consumption, olives continue to be popular, with an annual consumption of
1.8 kg per person, about the same as that of Greece and almost 3 times that of
the US (but less that Syria, the world leader at 6 kg per person).
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Olives from major
commercial processors are available in supermarkets’, in jars, plastic and in
bulk, and in bulk from small producers at neighborhood ferias, street fairs, small shops and at La Vega, Santiago’s large
public market. The most common varieties
are the green, purple and black types in the photo below. Their colors indicate
how ripe they were when picked, and while the green and black are mild, smooth
and buttery; the purples (our favorites) always have a trace of bitterness. All commonly sell for 4000 CLP a kg (US$3.60/lb.)
at ferias; more in supermarkets.
Olives at the feria where I buy mine, along with
pickled chilies, onions and mixed vegetables.
In the back are dried peaches, walnuts, garbanzo beans, and fresh
chilies.
[1]
Vega, Garcilasso de la. 1688. The Royal Commentaries of Peru... Illustrated
with sculptures. Written originally in Spanish, by the Inca Garcilasso de la
Vega, and rendered into English, by Sir Paul Rycaut, Kt. London: Miles Flesher
for Jacob Tonson, 1688. p. 391.
[2] Sudy Bustamante, Ana X and Pablo
Cortéz Tirado. 2012. Aceite de oliva. Oficina de estudios y
políticas Agrarias, Odepa, Governero de Chile.
On line at http://www.odepa.gob.cl/odepaweb/publicaciones/doc/4878.pdf
But note that Chile’s exports are only about 1% of the world
total.
[4] In
July 2913 the Chilean TV program Contacto,
known for its exposés, reported that one Chilean “extra virgin” olive oil (and
one Italian and one Spanish oil) should actually be categorized as “Lampante
oil” and were not suitable for human consumption, while two other Chilean
brands (and one Italian brand) were found to have been made from olives that
had fermented. The makers disputed these
claims as did the Chilean minister of health who said the program “lied.” See http://www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/pais/2013/07/10/organizacion-de-consumidores-exige-que-se-retire-del-mercado-los-productos-denunciados-por-contacto/ and
[5] Pereira Salas,
Eugenio. 1977. Apuntes para la historia de la cocina
chilena. Santiago: Universitaria.
p. 20 On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/documentodetalle.asp?id=MC0006512 all translations mine unless otherwise noted.
[6] Gay, Claudio. 1862-1865.
Agricultura, Tomo 2. París: En casa del autor; Chile: Museo de Historia
Natural de Santiago, p. 149-50. On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/documentodetalle.asp?id=MC0002688
[7]
Assuming 25-30 kg of olives per tree with and a yield of 20% of that weight in
oil. See. Correa Vergara, Luis, below.
[8] Tornero, Recaredo S. 1872 Chile ilustrado: Guía descriptivo del
territorio de Chile. Valpariso: Librerias I Ajencias del Mercurio. p. 404. On line athttp://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/documentodetalle.asp?id=MC0012105
[9] Correa Vergara, Luis. 1938. Agricultura Chilena, tomo II. Santiago: Imprenta Nascimenta. p. 306
[10] Sudy Bustamante, Ana X and Pablo
Cortés Tirado. 2012. Aceite de oliva. Oficina
de Estudios y Políticas Agrarias, Ministerio de Agricultura, Gobierno de
Chile. On line at http://www.odepa.gob.cl/odepaweb/publicaciones/doc/4878.pdf
[11] International Olive Oil Council (November
2012) PDF charts on line at http://www.internationaloliveoil.org/estaticos/view/131-world-olive-oil-figures
[12]
Chile Olive Oil, Extra Virgin Journey, on line at http://www.chileoliveoil.cl/extra-virgin-journey/
[13]
Gay, Claudio. Op cit.
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