José Vico Lizana - Potosí 10, S.A.

Among the winners of the annual Spanish Ministry of Agriculture olive oil awards, outstanding, in this publication's opinion, was the first prize in the taste category of ‘sweet green fruit’ presented to a cold-pressed extra virgin, by the name of Fuenroble, pressed entirely from picual olives in the province of Jaén. Both experience and handed-down wisdom would have it that this varietal, which comprises over 90% of the province's production, would never even be considered 'sweet', let alone make it on to any short list for an award as such. So, given the opportunity, The Olive Oil Gazette made the trip to Orcera in the sublimely beautiful Sierra de Segura to interview the man behind this accomplishment - José Vico Lizana, managing director of the press named Potosi 10, S.A.

Mr. Vico, a native of Úbeda (Jaén) and an agricultural engineer by training, has been the guiding force behind Potosí 10 since its inception in 1998, supervising not only the milling but also the actual olive plantations themselves. Under his mandate, this press has won thirteen national and international awards and it takes no more than a few minutes in his presence to find oneself seduced by his personal quest to produce the highest quality olive oil possible. Hopefully, the following excerpts from the two hours of conversation this writer enjoyed with him will have a similar effect on the reader.

The interview was conducted, translated and edited by Charles Butler Mackay for The Olive Oil Gazette - The Spanish Olive Oil Industry News Source.

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C.B.: Can you tell us a bit about your history with Potosí 10?

J.V.: I began working for the owners of this mill in 1987. The family had decided to reinvigorate the extensive but unproductive nineteenth century olive plantations they have in the area and they hired me, as an agricultural engineer, to supervise that project. At the root, we are farmers.

C.B.: Improve them? In what sense?

J.V.: In terms of the quality of the olive oil they produced because it was obvious to the owners that the only way to make these properties work economically was to produce a quality olive oil and bottle it and sell it themselves. The business of selling in bulk by the tanker load was just not viable.

C.B.: But the press wasn’t built yet.

J.V.: No. We began milling our olives through one of the local cooperatives. Unfortunately, we found out that the level of quality control there made it impossible to achieve our goals.

C.B.: Why would that be?

J.V.: Basically, the co-ops are not very strict in controlling the source of the olives that are brought in for harvest – meaning separating those collected from the ground from those harvested directly from the tree or distinguishing between zones of production. In the end they wind up mixing everything together, making it impossible to have any guarantee of quality, no matter how much care you took with your own.

C.B.: So, the challenge has been quality right from the beginning?

J.V.: That’s right. We grow our olives in areas that are right on the border between productive agricultural land and mountain. In areas that are more purely agricultural, with the same costs a grower can harvest several times the quantity of olives that we do. Mountainous zones are difficult and expensive to work because of the steep terrain and because the soil tends to be less fertile and more shallow. The trouble is the cost per tree in terms of care and maintenance is identical. Then you have to add to this the much greater harvesting expenses per kilo of oil produced.

C.B.: What is the average production of these properties?

J.V.: Irrigated trees give us an average of thirty kilos of olives per tree, the rest fourteen or fifteen.

Ed. note: The unirrigated trees belonging to this writer, by no means the most productive in the province, produce a yearly average of thirty kilos a year each.

C.B.: Are you saying that Potosí 10 only presses olives from the properties of its owners?

J.V.: More or less. About 80% come from our own groves and the remaining 20% via contracts we have with other growers.

C.B.: The terms of these agreements would have to be fairly strict, given your insistence on quality.

J.V.: The main conditions are that the grower must deliver the olives during the month of November, all the fruit must be collected from the tree, with none from the ground and it must be delivered on the day it is picked.

C.B.: Do you physically supervise the harvest, in these cases?

J.V.: Yes, we do.

C.B.: How does Potosí 10 determine the price that is paid to these growers?

J.V.: Well, in the same way that any other private, non-cooperative mill does – by percentage of oil extracted and a market price.

C.B.: But you must be paying something extra to compensate for the all the expenses you outlined above. How do you calculate that?

J.V.: We do, but it depends on a wide range of factors – weather damage, particularly. In general terms, we pay the January producer price plus an amount that wouldn’t be below 10% of that value. But I can’t give a precise figure because of all the factors that go into the calculation. The end result of all this is that we are forced to sell our olive oil bottled. Shipping it in tanker trucks does not cover our costs.

C.B.: Where did you get the name ‘Potosí 10’?

J.V.: As you probably know, Potosí, in Bolivia, was the source of much of the wealth in precious metals that Spain received from its American colonies. It is also a word that, according to the dictionary of the Royal Academy (which Mr. Vico pulls from the bookshelf), means ‘extraordinary richness’ – hence the Spanish expression ‘It’s worth a potosí’. We felt that it was an appropriate description of what we were trying to accomplish here.

C.B.: Was the project successful right from the beginning?

J.V.: No way! The first few years were disastrous.

C.B.: How do you mean?

J.V.: I mean we weren’t able to extract an extra virgin olive oil that met our quality requirements, speaking in terms of flavour characteristics. What we managed to produce was an oil that was not really distinguishable from any other produced from picual olives – very good in terms of health benefits, very resistant to oxidization but excessively spicy, bitter and strong-tasting. In the end, we were not able to successfully commercialize our oil at a price that took into account the costs involved.

C.B.: Obviously, you found a solution to the problem.

J.V.: Yes, we started to pick and mill our crop on the 2nd of November each year, rather than the traditional mid-December. By December 15th, the mill is closed.

Ed. note: The co-ops in Jaén province do not generally start up the presses until early December, and the grand part of deliveries are made after Christmas holidays. Virtually any olive grower in the region would characterize Potosí’s strategy as pure insanity.

C.B.: How did this novel idea occur to you?

J.V.: It’s not like we woke up one morning knowing that that was the solution to our problem. It was more a logical process. Fundamental is the fact that you cannot produce a quality olive oil if you are including olives that have previously fallen from the trees, and the situation that any grower encounters in January is exactly that – a certain significant percentage of the crop brought to the ground by winds and rain. Speaking of picual olives, the advantage they have is that they are among the easiest to harvest because of their weak physical attachment to the tree. The other side of the coin is that they fall of their own accord with great facility.

C.B.: Obviously, beginning so early has its disadvantages also.

J.V.: Yes. The first problem is the elevated water content of the olives at that time of year, and the consequent lowering of the percentage of oil they contain. Fruit picked in January in this area will give you an average water content of 43% and will produce 21 or 22% of its weight in oil. Taking out the approximately 3% that ends up emulsified, you end up with around 18 kilos of oil for every 100 kilos of olives. In early November, not only does the oil content fall to 14 or 15% and the water rise to 62%, but the percentage of unextractable oil reaches nearly 5%. The end result is a drop of nearly 50% in the quantity of oil it is possible to press from a given weight of olives.

C.B.: Are there any factors that mitigate this effect?

J.V.: First, it is more economical to harvest early. You get 100% of your crop from the tree and avoid the extra cost of picking it from the ground. Second, you lose fewer olives, or avoid the loss of quality that comes from infestation of the fruit with the larvae of insects or the arrival of freezing weather.

C.B.: This would be contrary to the general wisdom of the area that has it that it is best to wait until after the first cold weather reduces the water content of the fruit.

J.V.: Effectively, but the result is an olive oil that is only suitable for selling in bulk.

C.B.: Why do the co-ops not open earlier, if all this is true?

J.V.: Simply put, it does not interest them economically. Their costs are derived more from the weight of the olives milled than the amount of oil extracted. In effect, water content is their enemy. On top of this, there exist also physical difficulties in separating the water from the oil in immature fruit due to its internal structure.

C.B.: What would cause that?

J.V.: In immature fruit, the oil is contained in sacs located within what is known as the ‘olive water’. Later in the year, these sacs break down of their own accord as part of the natural evolution of the fruit, but in November the mill must physically break down this barrier in the crushing process, making it far more expensive and time consuming.

C.B.: Obviously, the end result in terms of the flavour characteristics of your olive oil has been outstanding. Can you elaborate on this?

J.V.: The most notable change, in the organoleptic sense, is that the bitter and spicy components of the flavour become much more balanced and bouquet becomes noticeably more elaborate if the olives are picked just as they are changing colour from green to black. Our changeover to these dates brought us immediate recognition when we won the 2005 Ministry of Agriculture prize in the Bitter Green Fruit category. We were the first from Jaén to ever achieve this and it gave us the boost we needed to continue with the project.

C.B.: But, hold on. Did you not receive the same award this year for the same olive oil in the ‘sweet’ category?

J.V.: This is what I mean when I say that our techniques result in a very balanced and flavourful product. The producer does not decide in which category the entry will be placed. We merely send our sample, with the required proofs of origin, and so on, to the sponsoring organization and the tasters themselves, in blind test conditions, decide to which class it will be allocated. Fuenroble is an olive oil with such a spectacular range of flavours that it has, alternately, been placed and won awards in two, usually mutually exclusive categories.

C.B.: Very impressive, José.

J.V.: Thank you. The surprise for us throughout the development of our olive oil was that its bitterness decreased as the olives were harvested less mature. It goes against the normal logic of a fruit sweetening as it ripens. But regardless, it was just as much a tremendous shock for us when we were awarded the ‘sweet’ prize this year. We would never have imagined. In the end it leaves us with the problem of how really to define the characteristics of the picual.

C.B.: Is there a manner in which you personally prefer to characterize the olive oils from Potosí 10?

J.V.: I like to think of the range of flavours in our products as if speaking of instruments in an orchestra. There’s a grand difference between listening to a trumpet playing its part by itself and another in its place in the symphony which is analogous to that of the flavour of an olive oil that is absolutely dominated by one aspect compared to another that is balanced.

C.B.: You really feel this in your heart and soul, don’t you?

J.V.: (laughs).

C.B.: Is there any specific process that you follow within the olive groves themselves that are distinct from the usual?

J.V.: One of the advantages to harvesting early is that we avoid much of the problem of weed growth and the attendant overuse of herbicides coinciding with the harvest. One treatment with a pre-emergent type is all we need.

C.B.: As to the use of pesticides?

J.V.: We are also able to eliminate a good part of those treatments by harvesting in November while absolutely eliminating the flavour consequences of there being insect larva contained in the olive.

Ed. note: One of the undesirable flavours that professional tasters categorize is translated to English as ‘worm’, and derives from the presence of insect larva in the originating crop.

C.B.: Does anyone think that Potosí 10 is manipulating the specific batches that are submitted to competitions?

J.V.: No! And it would be impossible in any regard. All of our oil is produced from picual olives harvested within the boundaries of the P.D.O. Sierra de Segura and certified as such by its regulating council.

C.B.: Do you think that the results you have achieved contain any message for the olive growers and oil producers of Jaén province?

J.V.: Absolutely. The picual has always been considered a bit of a substandard varietal with regards to the quality of the oil it produces. The result of this is that the grand part of the production is sold, at reduced prices, in bulk to bottlers primarily located in Italy. The oil is there blended, not just to mask its taste, but to impart its excellent storage life to the other varieties in the mix. The consequence of this is that growers seeking a superior product have turned to planting other types of varietals. Potosí 10 has shown that this not necessary. What is needed is a change in the growing and harvesting techniques typical of this province.

C.B.: Under what brand names does Potosí 10 market its olive oils?

J.V.: Our premier label is ‘Fuenroble’, which is named after one of our olive groves. We also sell another cold-pressed oil behind the label, ‘Odoliva’, and a series of flavoured oils under the name ‘Rumba’.

C.B.: Flavours?

J.V.: They are bottled with any of various aromatic plants from the region, such as rosemary, thyme, garlic, and so on.

C.B.: What other products do you derive from the olive?

J.V.: We now market a collection of personal care products under the labels ‘Herboliva’ and ‘Farmoliva’, depending on whether they are to be sold in stores or pharmacies. Aside from their value as creams and soaps, they have the added advantage of imparting many of the health benefits of olive oil, but through absorption by the skin.

C.B.: What products do you offer?

J.V.: Currently we have seven on the market. They are: a lip balm, a skin cream that is 47% olive oil, an after sun lotion, a shaving cream, a body milk, a shower gel and an exfoliant whose abrasive component is ground olive pits.

C.B.: What distinguishes your products from the many similar on the market?

J.V.: That’s easy. The large part of ‘olive oil’ cosmetic products on the market ‘contain’ olive oil, be it 1 %. Ours are made from olive oil.

C.B.: How are sales?

J.V.: Fantastic! These products are what put our business over the top. One of our important markets right now is South Korea. As far as we are concerned, the future of the olive oil business lies in products of this type more than it does in the oil itself.

C.B.: Why is that?

J.V.: As we see it, the task of requiring that the consumer be able to differentiate sufficiently between qualities and varieties of olive oil to make the more expensive production of excellent oils truly profitable is too large.

C.B.: But that might be more typical of the Spanish consumer, no?

J.V.: Yes. I am referring to sales inside of Spain where the product is used daily and price is more important than flavour quality.

C.B.: I noticed a number of very sophisticated looking machines in your laboratory. Can you give us an idea of how technology has aided Potosí in overcoming the challenges faced?

J.V.: For us, modern technology is fundamental. For example, by using a near infrared spectrometer programmed with the desired characteristics of acidity, peroxide content, and so on, we can know with certainty which quality of oil we are going to get from a given trailer load of olives. We take a sample, pass it through the machine, and in fifteen minutes we know which batch that load will be part of. We have the oil pressed, stored and categorized within three or four hours of the arrival of the tractor from the groves.

C.B.: With obvious results.

J.V.: That’s right. Year in, year out, over 90% of the olive oil we produce is classified as extra virgin by the P.D.O. - a figure far in excess of that of any other mill and one that can’t be achieved without rigorous controls in place throughout the process.

C.B.: Thanks very much, José.

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Fuenroble cold-pressed, extra virgin olive oil, along with the company’s other brands, Odoliva and Rumba, and its Farmoliva and Herboliva line of skin care products are all produced by Potosí 10, S.A., Carretera de Hornos, s/n, Orcera (Jaén) 23370. Their website can be accessed at www.potosi10.com.