How to Make Award-Winning Olive Oil in a Tractor-Trailer

Samir Bayraktar has pro­duced extra vir­gin olive oil in the back of a trac­tor-trailer truck for nearly a decade.

The mechan­i­cal engi­neer first devel­oped the idea while work­ing as the man­ag­ing direc­tor of Turkish olive oil pro­ducer Nar Gourmet.

“We had a project to research and find minor local cul­ti­vars around Anatolia,” Bayraktar told Olive Oil Times. ​“In the first year, we started mak­ing olive oil out of these cul­ti­vars, but not all the olive oils were as good as we wanted them to be.”

“The sec­ond year, we decided to make this mobile mill to pro­duce olive oils under the same con­di­tion in each region,” he added.

Bayraktar’s deci­sion to build the mobile mill paid off and Nar Gourmet earned a Gold Award at the 2014 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition with olive oil pro­duced from its portable mill.

By the begin­ning of 2018, Bayraktar moved back to the United States, where he had received his Master’s degree more than a decade before. ​“2019 was my first pro­duc­tion year in California,” he said.

Appropriately dubbed the Olive Truck, Bayraktar imme­di­ately returned to win­ning ways at the world’s largest olive oil qual­ity con­test. Since 2020, he has won 10 NYIOOC awards, includ­ing one Gold and two Silver Awards this year.

Bayraktar trans­forms olives from two con­tracted farms in Fairfield and Lower Lake, California, west of Sacramento. He also advises neigh­bor­ing olive farm­ers and mills some of their olives with the mobile mill.

One of the perks of work­ing with his neigh­bors is the abil­ity to exper­i­ment. While Bayraktar mainly har­vests Coratina, Leccino and Frantoio olives with his con­tracted farm­ers, he is plant­ing Favalosa and Itrana olives. ​“In five years, we will be mak­ing good olive oil out of these new plan­ta­tions,” he said.

Bayraktar attrib­uted his con­sis­tent suc­cess in the NYIOOC to his focus on qual­ity over quan­tity and the flex­i­bil­ity pro­vided by the mobile mill.

“The busiest period for me is prob­a­bly the three weeks to one month before the sea­son because it’s sched­ul­ing time,” he said.

Bayraktar uses data from pre­vi­ous har­vests and analy­sis of the cur­rent crop of olives to decide the pre­cise moment to har­vest and mill in each grove.

“I col­lect the sam­ples two or three weeks before what I esti­mate to be the best har­vest win­dow,” he said. ​“Then I get the results from the lab.”

Based on the olives’ oil accu­mu­la­tion and mois­ture con­tent, Bayraktar deter­mines the best moment to stop irri­ga­tion, sched­ules the days to har­vest each grove, and con­tracts a har­vest crew.

Between his two con­tracted groves and those of his neigh­bors and friends, Bayraktar spends between three and four weeks har­vest­ing and trans­form­ing olives right in the grove.

The day before the har­vest begins, Bayraktar dri­ves his mobile mill to the grove. ​“All the equip­ment is installed in the con­tainer on the trailer,” he said.

“The basic setup is you bring the equip­ment in the truck and hook it up to the elec­tric­ity and water source,” Bayraktar added. ​“We also fil­ter the water before we fill the tank to wash the olives and start.”

The morn­ing of the har­vest, Bayraktar arrives in time to pick at 6:30 a.m. If he is har­vest­ing some­where the truck can­not con­nect to elec­tric­ity, Bayraktar pow­ers it with a gen­er­a­tor.

After the first hour and a half of har­vest­ing – done by hand or with shak­ers – there are enough olives to start milling con­tin­u­ously for the rest of the day. Bayraktar mills between five and 7.5 tons of olives each day.

“When they fin­ish har­vest­ing by about 4 or 5 p.m., we con­tinue crush­ing to get oil from the last batch for another hour to an hour and a half,” he said. ​“Then we clean the equip­ment to ensure it is refreshed and ready for the next morn­ing.”

From branch to stor­age, Bayraktar said he trans­forms olives into olive oil within 45 min­utes, help­ing him achieve his pri­mary goal – pre­serv­ing the high­est amount of polyphe­nols in the extra vir­gin olive oils.

With his sights set on high polyphe­nol counts, which con­tribute to the organolep­tic and health qual­i­ties of extra vir­gin olive oil, Bayraktar prefers an early har­vest.

Usually, this means har­vest­ing in the sec­ond or third week of October. However, Bayraktar believes cli­mate change is push­ing up the har­vest in California. ​“This year, we har­vested 10 days ear­lier,” he said.

Bayraktar added rain dur­ing the har­vest days in the past two years had com­pli­cated things. ​“I pre­fer a dry win­dow of weather that’s a lit­tle bit cooler from mid-October to mid-November,” he said. ​“This is my wish, but it’s not hap­pen­ing.”

Like many of his fel­low California grow­ers, he said the 2022/23 crop year was not great. ​“What I expe­ri­enced in California was not a good year,” Bayraktar con­firmed.

While his groves were largely unaf­fected by the extreme weather events and drought that dam­aged groves in other parts of the state, he said some of his neigh­bors lost olives to frost.

“They did­n’t even har­vest because it was not going to be fea­si­ble for them to har­vest and pay for the labor,” Bayraktar said. ​“Labor is super expen­sive in California, and find­ing labor is also chal­leng­ing.”

The com­bi­na­tion of a tight labor mar­ket in the United States – where there are more job open­ings than peo­ple look­ing for work – and many crops in California need­ing to be har­vested simul­ta­ne­ously has made this year espe­cially dif­fi­cult for pro­duc­ers to find work­ers.

However, Bayraktar is opti­mistic about the future. He sees grow­ing inter­est in his prod­ucts as they con­tinue to win awards and hopes this indi­cates a pos­i­tive tra­jec­tory for high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­tion in California.

Bayraktar also thinks recent rain and snow across much of the state, replen­ish­ing the snow­pack and refill­ing aquifers, will help olive grow­ers in the com­ing crop year.

“If we con­tinue hav­ing a lit­tle bit more rain in late April, that will help,” he said. ​“I’m not expect­ing any­thing dur­ing sum­mer.”