Tales from a Corfu olive press
We are driving out of the village when we first see them. Pick-up trucks piled high with bags fit to burst, with waggy-tailed dogs pacing up and down on top and looking rather excited. We follow them to Vistonas, where a ramshackle collection of buildings is currently the centre of the local universe. Inside, the place is steeped in the smell of olives. A pick-up truck reverses, the driver stops, gets out and goes around to the back to take off the sacks. The Alfa-Laval machinery, bright green and gleaming steel, clangs and spins and whirs as it is fed with the olives. The whole thing is a Mediterranean version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . Down a chute they go and then up a steep conveyor belt before being shaken and washed and whooshed off to the macerator, where each section is labelled with the name of a customer on a chalk board. No danger, then, of anyone getting the wrong batch at the business end. The pulp shoots off to the press, with the resid...