Olive Season 2012

Loaded with Olives

Early October is the start of the new olive season for us.  That is to say, we have started picking green olives for curing and eventually for eating.  It is still too early to pick olives to bring to the press for their oil.  That will happen sometime in November.  We have been fortunate this year for at least two reasons; the olive crop is huge and infestation of them by the Mediterranean Fruit Fly is almost nonexistent.  Because of the absence of the fruit fly, picking olives in good condition has been easy: a pleasure I did not have in previous years.

Center Green Olive is a Halkidiki the One Euro Coin is for Size
 and the Black Olives to the Right are Kalamatas 

On our 4,000 square meter (1 acre) plot of land, we have 69 small olive trees and all of them are loaded with fruit.  We have one Kalamata tree and the other 68 are Halkidiki trees.  I suppose that most people are familiar with Kalamata olives which are very tasty, but probably few have heard of the Halkidiki olives which are a large size table olive and grow to be considerably larger than the Kalamatas.  Olives, whether green or black (ripe olives), need to be cured to remove their bitter, unpleasant taste.  There are different ways to cure olives.




Cutting a Cross in the Blossom End

 The Water Cure:  Now we are curing the green olives using the common water cure.  The olives are picked, washed, and a single cut or cross cut is made at the blossom end of the fruit.  The cut olives are placed in a 5 liter (1.32 gallon) container and filled with tap water.  The water is changed daily for a period of about 30 to 40 days.  This water treatment essentially removes the bitter ingredients, but even after 40 days it is necessary to sample the olives for taste to be sure that most of their bitterness is gone.  If this is not the case the water treatment is continued until the olives pass the taste test.

Changing the Water

A slight variation which considerably decreases the curing time involves crushing the olives instead of cutting them.  Crushed olives will generally cure by the above method in 10 to 16 days.


Black olives are cured by the above method and it works well, too; but, black Kalamata olives are neither cut nor crushed, they are simply left whole.

Don't Strike so Hard as to Break the Olive Pit

After curing the olives we place them in a 5 L container together with one or two cups of vinegar, 1.5 cups of salt, one tablespoonful of citric acid, and we fill the container with tap water.  We let them stand for two to three months before serving.  After this time we wash them of the salt and acid solution and place them in a container covering them in olive oil and oregano.  We serve the olives directly from this container.


Salt Water Cure:  The salt water cure is simple enough.  We place uncut green olives in a 5 L container, fill with clean sea water, add a tablespoonful of citric acid, cap the container, and let it stand for 3 to 4 months.  At the end of this time the olives are washed and prepared for serving as described above.


Salt Cure:  It is still too early to do this, but we will be doing it soon enough.  A ripe olive is black and bitter.  Like the salt water cure, the salt cure is simple but faster taking no more than a week or two, and what you get are wrinkled, black olives that have a great taste.  The uncut black olives are placed in a porous bag along with coarse salt (food grade sea salt).  The bag is tied and placed on boards to slightly elevate it.  A rock on top of the bag to act as a weight and the bag is turned daily.  When no more water is released from the bag, the olives are removed, washed, and placed in a container with olive oil and oregano ready for serving.


An Important Note:  The oregano that we use grows wild on our 1 acre plot, and we usually harvest it in August.  The olive oil that we use is ours as well, and I will talk about it in a future blog.

Start of the New Wine Season and Making Red Wine

Sample of Estate Grapes

For this year, 2012, August 26^th marks the beginning of my new wine year.  So, on this day I picked my grapes which are a mixture of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon which will produce this year's Estate Wine.  I got a total of four bushel size containers of grapes.  I promptly crushed them, removed their stems, and placed them in a 75 liter plastic barrel that serves as the primary fermentation vessel.




Packets of Dry Wine Yeasts

Once in the primary fermenter I did a sugar analysis of the grape juice and removed about one quart of the must which I boiled, let cool to room temperature, and added one 5 gram packet of dry Pasteur Red yeast, a wine yeast.  This mixture of wine yeast and boiled, cooled must is called a yeast starter.  After about 12 to 14 hours, this starter was foaming with the yeasts actively converting sugar in the must into carbon dioxide gas (hence the foaming) and alcohol.  I poured the yeast starter into the primary fermenter, thus inoculating the must with the Pasteur Red.

Boiling Must to Which one Packet of Pasteur Red
Will be Added When Cool

I can not afford to let too much time pass once the grapes are crushed before I inoculate the must.  In my case, there are three reasons for this.  The outside skins of the grapes are covered with wild yeasts and I don't want these wild yeasts to have much of an influence on the quality of the wine produced.  The temperatures that I work at in this warm climate are high, usually above 25^oC, and at these temperatures yeasts are very active.  Finally, I do not use sulfites in my wines; sulfites are added to musts to destroy wild yeasts and other microbes.  Over the years, I have found that if no more 10 to 24 hours pass before inoculation of the must, wild yeast activity is low and insufficient to compete with commercial wine yeasts that I use.




A Refractometer

Using a refractometer I did a sugar analysis of the must along with three water dilutions of the must.  A refractometer measures the sugar content of grape juices.  It is easy to use, but the largest source of error using the instrument is incurred when the temperature of the measurement is not also recorded.  As it turned out, all of the readings using the refractometer occurred at a temperature of 28^oC, and I found the sugar content to be 23.6% by weight, which gives a potential alcohol content of about 13.4% by volume.  I will say more about using a refractometer in a later blog.

Mixing the Must in a Primary Fermenter

Once the must is in the primary fermenter and inoculated with yeast, it is necessary to mix the must well at least one time each day.  Primary fermentation is active for about 7 to 10 days.  After that length of time it slows considerably as shown by the lack of foaming upon stirring, and it is at this time that the must must be transferred to the secondary fermentation containers. 

Measuring the Alcohol Content of Wine

Each year I try to make four different wines produced from locally grown gapes: a white made from Muscat grapes, a rose' made from Merlot grapes, a Merlot, and an estate wine made from a mixture of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.  This is the time of the year that I bottle my wines, but before I do I measure their alcohol content for no other reason than when people ask me how strong is the wine, I can give them the answer.


There is more than one method used to measure the alcohol content of wine.  Some require expensive equipment and detailed procedures, and others require no more than a hydrometer, an instrument that all serious home wine makers have as standard equipment.  The hydrometer (there are different kinds of these and they come in different ranges) is used to measure the specific gravity of water solutions.  Two important water solutions in wine making are sugar in water and alcohol in water.


Technically, and in the limited sense that it applies to wine making, specific gravity is the ratio of the mass of a volume of solution of sugar in water (must) [or alcohol in water (wine)] to the mass of an equal volume of water measured at a specific temperature.  The specific gravity is then related to the exact composition of the solution, that is, the percent of sugar in the must or the percent of alcohol in the wine.  So, as an example, at 20^oC the specific gravity of a 20% solution of sugar in water is 1.083 while that of a 24% solution is 1.101;  thus, if you measure and find that the specific gravity of a must is 1.083 at 20^oC you may assume that it contains 20% sugar.

Two Hydrometers

The hydrometer is a long cylindrical glass instrument which has enclosed within the glass housing a visible scale or scales.  The longer one of the two shown actually has three such scales:  one for measuring specific gravity, one for measuring percent sugar by weight, and one for measuring potential alcohol by volume.  The other, shorter hydrometer is a Gay Lussac and measures the percent by volume of alcohol directly.  Each hydrometer is designed to give direct  readings at a particular temperature.  The longer one is intended for use at 60^oF and the Gay Lussac at 68^oF.  Hardly ever are these exact temperature conditions reached in actual practice.


To measure the amount of alcohol in my wines, I have used three methods.  The simplest of these is to measure the specific gravity and temperature of the must just prior to the start of fermentation, and then after almost one year later to measure the specific gravity and temperature of the resulting wine.  The two specific gravity measures are converted into what is called potential alcohol, and the difference between the before fermentation potential alcohol reading minus the wine's potential alcohol reading gives the alcohol content of the wine.  The temperature is recorded because specific gravity depends on temperature.  In other words, the specific gravity of a solution at 60^oF will not be the same value that it would be for that solution at 80^oF.  Specific gravity tables are published to apply at certain standard temperatures, such as 60^oF (15.56^oC) or 68^oF (20^oC) as well as others, and in order to use these tables accurately most specific gravity measurements must be corrected for temperature.


Consider this example, on September 7, 2011, I measured the specific gravity of my white must just before the start of fermentation and found it to be 1.102 at 78^oF (25.6^oC).  Then, on July 1, 2012, I measured the specific gravity of the resulting white wine to be 0.992 at 77.4^oF (25.2^oC).  Both of these measurements were obtained using the 60^oF hydrometer, and both specific gravity measurements must be corrected for temperature.  At around 77^oF to 78^oF the use of a 60^oF hydrometer calls for a correction of 0.002 to be added to each specific gravity;  thus, we get 1.104 and 0.994, respectively, for the corrected specific gravities.  With these corrected specific gravities, the potential alcohol table that comes with the hydrometer gives for the first reading 13.7% and for the second 0%.  The difference between these two readings is 13.7% alcohol by volume, so my white Muscat wine is 13.7% alcohol by volume.

Distillation of Rose' Wine

Earlier I said that I determine the alcohol content of my wines by different methods.  The potential alcohol is one method that I use, but I also use a weight method and a distillation method, too.  By these two latter methods, the alcohol content of my white Muscat wine is 14.1% and 12.7%, respectively.  I present these results as an illustration of the fact that the methods available to the home wine maker for alcohol determination are approximate, and, by far, the potential alcohol method is the easiest and least expensive method to use, and it gives very acceptable results.

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Filtering the Wine

During the Filtration of the White Wine

As I said in an earlier post, I began making wine in 1978.  Years before I started to make my own wine, I tasted homemade wines, and I enjoyed very few of them.  Most of the homemade wines I experienced suffered at least two large flaws; when held up to the light they were hazy and not at all clear, and they did not taste good.  In fact, I would say that most of the homemade wines that I came in contact with had a dank, musty or swampy taste that just was not at all pleasing.





The White Wine Just Prior to Filtering and Having
Been Treated to a Fining Agent

 Some would say that wine clarity is not that important.  I personally find a clear wine appealing and an invitation to taste it.  Because of its color, the quality of clarity is easy to see in a white wine.  In the thirty-four years of making wine, there have been only a handful of times that my white wines have fallen brilliantly clear on their own, and if I were not careful, the settled sediments would easily become suspended again into the wine.

The Same White Wine as Above After Filtration
Label is on Opposite Side of Jug as Viewed
Through 15 Inches of Wine

There are many fining agents on the market.  A fining agent is a material that is added to the wine prior to bottling that is supposed to promote charification.  They are more or less easy to use, but they can offer problems and often times the wine is no clearer or just slightly so after using them.  After experimenting with many of them, I find that by far the best and easiest fining agent to use is a filter.  Now, there is no question that just prior to bottling, I filter all of my wines.



When making wine at home, the containers used and their care are of primary importance.  I do not use wood containers because they are very difficult to keep clean and sterile.  The home wine makers that I come in contact with here in Greece usually use old wooden barrels that have been in use for generations and they have not been cared for well.  As a result, the wines produced in them pick up off flavors that are just not good!  Besides, if wine with wood flavoring is desired, there are different varieties of wood chips available in most wine making supply stores along with instructions for their proper use.  I use only glass, stainless steal, and plastic containers;  the plastic ones are used very briefly and only in the early stages of the wine making process.  Of course, the big advantages of glass and stainless steal are that they are easy to care for and to sterilize, they are easy to handle and move around, and they do not add any flavors of their own to the wine.

Two Gems of Northern Greece

Meteora: St. Barbara

Whenever friends or family come to stay with us they give us the opportunity to take them to see some interesting and unique places in Northern Greece.  This year, during Easter Week, we took friends from England to Meteora and Aigai at Vergina.  These are two of the many gems of northern Greece that are not visited by most tourists who are more interested in the islands of Greece or the Athens area and the Peloponnese.





Meteora: St. Varlaam

 Meteora which is just above the nearby town of Kalambaka is a collection of monasteries which sit upon the tops of shear cliff rocks pock marked with holes in them.  Because they are in such a seemingly inaccessible place positioned on the very tops of the cliffs, when seen for the first time people usually wonder how these monasteries were built.  Most of the monasteries have many steps to climb before entering their grounds and buildings, but each climb is well worth the effort for the views and experience.

Hill Housing the Royal Tombs

Vergina is a town in northern Greece and is also the site of the ancient city of Aigai; "The first city of Macedon" declares the brochure that you get when you pay to see the ruins of the ancient city and the tomb of Philip II father of Alexander the Great.  The actual tomb of Philip II is part of a small museum of the finds of the area and those artifacts that were discovered during the excavation of the artificial hill that buried the royal tombs.  The small museum is within the reconstructed hill, and it is an excellent example of the museums that have been built in recent years which are dedicated to exhibiting the specific finds of an area.

Racking the Wine

Wine Jugs Showing Lees

My tenth edition of Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary among its many definitions for the word rack gives this one for the transitive verb: "to draw off (as wine) from the lees."  I have been making wine since 1978, and racking is a most important part of the process, if you wish to make a wine that you would be proud to serve at your dinner table and that will compete favorably with commercially produced ones.  There are other factors that go into producing a good to excellent wine, but more about those later.




Wine Being Racked

Those lees mentioned in the definition are the result of many and different causes most important of which include dead and dying yeast cells and excess insoluble acids and other insoluble materials that if not deposited would affect the clarity of the wine and give it a hazy appearance.  I generally rack my wines six times over the course of the twelve months from the time that I place the fermenting musts into glass containers to the time that I bottle the finished wine.  The fourth racking that I have just completed early this April is a little late by about one month by my standard, and there are two more rackings to be done before the filtering and final bottling of the wine in late July and early August.  Racking is important to prevent off flavors entering the wine which are primarily due to the decaying yeasts and hazes.  These off flavors can utterly destroy the quality of what would be an otherwise good tasting wine, giving it a heavy rotten egg smell and taste.




An Inexpensive Siphon

 In fact, racking is a decanting process which is carefully done to prevent redistributing the lees back into the liquid.  For the home wine maker this is easily accomplished by using a simple, inexpensive siphon devise which serves as both a pump and siphon and is fitted with a removable tip that draws the liquid into it from above the lees.

Greek Wild Onions



Broad Leaf Plant

 At this time of the year I usually get to work planting seeds for the coming summer season.  In fact though, this is also a time to harvest, but the harvest that I am thinking of is not at all a generally known one.  In New England in February most people know that it's time to collect the sap from the sugar maple and convert it into maple syrup, maple butter, maple candy, and other maple products.  Most people don't think of this as a harvest, but, in fact, for that part of the world it is the first harvest of the new season (year).





Deep in Hard Soil

Here, in this part of Greece I just harvested what the Greeks, especially the older Greeks, call βολβοί, or bulbs; these belong to a wild plant commonly known in Europe as the Tassel Hyacinth.  I was first introduced to these bulbs by my father when I was a child growing up in Haverhill, Massachusetts.  My father used to call them Greek Wild Onions.  When they are prepared properly, they taste nothing like an onion, and they are pink in color and they can be bitter to the taste.  They are not easy to harvest, requiring a 27 centimeter long fork or shovel to dig the bulbs out of the ground in what can be very hard packed soil.  Fortunately the bulbs produce easy to spot long, broad leaves and tassel like flowers, so finding them is not a chore.

Before Cleaning and Trimming

To prepare the bulbs for eating, the leaves are removed as well as the outer skin and roots of each bulb much as you would do an onion.  This gets to be a tedious affair since the bulbs excrete a sticky liquid that tends to get in the way of cleaning them.  Once the bulbs are clean they are soaked in water for a few days changing the water three or four times a day much as one does when curing olives.  This water pretreatment tends to remove some of the bitter materials within the bulbs, but more of this is accomplished when the bulbs are boiled in water for about 5 minutes.  Boiling the bulbs this way is repeated two or three times draining and replacing the water with fresh portions each time.  Finally, the cooked bulbs are rinsed, placed in a jar, covered in vinegar, capped and kept in the refrigerator for storage.  With the vinegar rinsed off, the bulbs are served in small portions at a time sprinkled with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Washed and Ready for Vinegar Storage

What This Blog is About

I am writing this blog to share information and my experiences with any one who has an interest in gardening, wine making, and visiting interesting places in the United States of America, Northern Greece, and elsewhere.


While we are both American citizens and we have a home in a small city in New Hampshire, my wife and I live in this small community of Paliouri, Greece, for much of the year, and we have been doing this for the past ten years.  We bought the four stremma, approximately one acre, plot of land in this village almost thirty years ago.  We started the foundation for our house on the plot just a few years after purchasing the land, and at various times over the past twenty-six years we have planted olive and other fruit trees on it, built and outfitted a home, planted a small vineyard, and established several garden plots for flowers and vegetables.  In that time we have also traveled considerably both within the USA and Greece and we have traveled to other parts of the world as well.


As an American living part-time abroad, I have come to learn much about the habits and culture of the Greek people.  It has been filled with and continues to be full of wonderful learning experiences which include occasional donkey serenades and flocks of sheep and goats.  At times this blog will feature some of those and other experiences.  My wife just mentioned that we might be early yet, but tomorrow we should go and look for some volvous (βολβούς).  I'll tell you all about them at a later time.

Start of the New Gardening Season

Cold Frame and Seed Cups

We have finally arrived back in Paliouri, Greece.  Before leaving here on November 20, 2011, for our home in the US, I planted what I call a winter garden.  The ground doesn't freeze here in the winter, so I planted lettuce, onion sets, garlic, cabbage sets, and other veggies that winter over nicely.  On returning we were not disappointed and found many fresh and good things to eat from the garden, and the harvest continues.  Now it's time to plant the summer tomatoes that we always look forward to, so I set up my portable "cold frame" which is nothing more than an old basement window frame that I salvaged when we replaced it with an aluminum one.  I simply built up the sides of the wood frame with some odd pieces of plywood that I saved from a previous construction project.

Cold Frame among the Roses

The cold frame pictured here measures (LxWxH) 100cm x 80cm x 40cm.  In addition to the seed cups, there are 4 5L bottles filled with water to act as heat sinks lining the insides of the frame.  The two maximum and minimum thermometers, one inside and the other outside the frame, monitor temperatures.  With the water heat sinks installed, there can be at least a 10 degree Fahrenheit higher temperature within the frame.  So, the last night that I recorded the minimum temperatures, just outside of the cold frame was 42 F while within it was 53 F.  At this time of year and with the sea just to our east by less than one mile, the temperature very seldom gets lower than 40 F.