World Olive Press Newsletter - V18 Olive Production in Lebanon

 Olive Production in Lebanon

 

In October 2023, Rich and I had the privilege and pleasure of visiting Lebanon for both educational (strengthening partnership with the American University of Beirut) and professional purposes. 

Pat and Rich Standing inside a 6000 year old olive tree - a Sister Tree of Noah in  Bchaaleh in Lebanon

Please use the link below to access Volume 18 of our Newsletter, World Olive Press.  Enjoy and thanks to all the growers, producers, mill operators and wonderful people who gave freely of their time to help us.

Olive Tree Sculpture - Breezes Animate the Leaves

 From the Website

The leaf form is an abstracted olive tree leaf which has been a symbol of hope and peace for millennia.
The four wings create an ever changing and complex movement. Olive leaf is a peaceful contemplative piece.

 

Maybe you can see it here

https://vimeo.com/169064284

 

 

 

Some reader messages for the Turkish Book

Hello Mrs. Zeynep,

I was waiting for a long time to write to you, I thought of sending an e-mail, but first of all, when I got your instagram address, I wanted to write from here. A few months ago, I read your Book of Olive Oil from Olive Grove to Table, which you wrote with R. Blatchly and P. O’hara, with great excitement, almost in a breath. It is not possible to describe the excitement that this book has caused me. I am a young olive / olive oil enthusiast who loves olives very much and dreams of boutique production in the Aegean one day. This book has increased my interest and knowledge. Thanks for your efforts.

Cansu💫 

Health to your hand. I just got one. As someone who has been working as a manager in İş Kültür Yayınları for 16 years, I am proud of the publishing house once again for bringing such a work to our country. I am currently 66 years old and I am studying Olive and Olive Processing Technologies at Edremit Vocational School. The entire class bought it. Health to your heart. 

Rengin Karan💫

Hello, I'm Deniz Özge Çolak💫, 
a senior undergraduate student at Hacettepe University, Department of Chemistry. I have read your book with great admiration.Thank you very much for every effort and information you provide. The olive tree has always been very important and meaningful to me, we have a few olive trees in our summer house in Ayvalık, I love to care for them, even to care about the olive trees of our neighbors who are not present or who are not there, and to make winter crushed olives. I would love to be with you in the Aegean Workshop and meet you, I hope these bad days will pass as soon as possible. Dear teacher, thank you very much again, everything is in your heart :)

I read with pleasure on my journey to Ayvalık today. I even tagged you. Ms. Zeynep, I love it.

I bought your book today, it is one of the rare books I read with pleasure.

I think you are in Yeni Foça. If there is an opportunity someday, I would like to get it signed. My workshop is in Izmir we hope you visit.

Health to your hand and pen.

Love and respect

Ali🌿

NTV Radio Adnan Bostancıoğlu is introducing your book in the program "Bookstore around the Corner". I listened to it while driving and  realized that for the first time, I started reading a book before Adnan Bostancıoğlu introduced it. 

Hello Mrs. Zeynep. I bought your book from Olive Oil to Table for Olive Oil and started reading. I wish there was a better quality paper and print. I was very sorry. It is probably so in English but you wrote that it is not the same book. Let's see. Greetings.

Erkan Otağ💫

Hello, I am reading your book with pleasure

I wanted you to know

Have a nice day

semayalcin💫

Hello I'm reading with interest thank you

İnci.Özer.50💫

Mrs. Zeynep, we have an olive counter in Istanbul on Monday, I recommend your book to my customers. We are waiting for you at your counter, I want your signed book.

bolzeytin💫

Hello Dr. Zeynep ... we watch your work with interest.

We have established an association that tries to bring together all the components of the olive / olive oil sector and started promotional activities ... On 21 March we will hold a festival in Aydın / Çine. However, before the festival, photographers of olive orchards will be in Bodrum on 10 March. We will have an exhibition, we thought to invite you to the event to sign your book along with events such as exhibitions, tastings, etc. ... can you spare time?

We will be happy to host you in Bodrum...

Cemal Belden💫

Zeynep Hanim greetings, Where can we buy 'The Chemical Story of Olive Oil'  in Turkey? Thanks.

Kerem💫

First of all, I would like to start my writing by being a supporter for this beautiful encyclopedia, because you gave the book to us Turks, and by saying that the words remain unhelpful whenever you remember your name.

We haven't met, this is bad on my part, so please don't take my next little criticism wrongly; I want you to know that I want to be constructive, not destructive.

By pouring "The Emergence of Olive" section into such a beautiful writing language; You made me enjoy the pleasure of reading by dreaming ... "It was perfect".

 ✔️"If olives are very cold when they come to the facility depending on the climate, they can be heated again at 25 ° C using water." This sentence made me feel like thrown into a cold shower. Let me say why, when your cold olives enter the machine they will warm up a lot. I couldn't quite understand this 25 C water . 

 ✔️You ended the subject by saying  "Super intensive olive cultivation is not very common in our country". Captain's Farm, Hermus, Vievi and many others that you know have adopted the super intensive method. I am not against showing the "California Olive Ranch" machine and the "South Africa Colossus harvester" machines as examples in the book, but you could present the monster-like machine that exists in our country by saying "Only for now" (with squares from Manisa / Köprübaşı)

Footnote: Although you know the producers of the captain's farm company‼ ️

 ✔️ "Since the extra virgin olive oil is already processed under 27 C, there is no need to mention" Cold Press "in the label".  Your sentence is perhaps the only mistake of the book that is caught off guard.

 ✔️While talking about sensory defects in "Olive Oil Tasting"; Whereas "woody, metallic, moldy, sirkems, heated" and the vital term is called "Vanilla" fragrance; where vanilla smell because it is a desired fruity feature in Edremit-Ayvalık oils in our country, although it appears to be a defect in

some sources .... It could be added as a footnote‼ ️

 ✔️Technological advances should have been followed and presented with comparison to the consumer/reader (plenty of resources are available on the Internet).

🌿 Advantages and disadvantages of hammer crushers were mentioned and the blade is given as an alternative, whereas a comparison should have been made.When warming is mentioned as a negative side for hammer, warming ratio for the blade should have been given!! 

🌿 Oxygen is said to be the biggest threat to the oil and after that it is stated that the dough should not be left in the malaxor. As an alternative "vertical malaxer" could have been mentioned!! 

 ✔️Pulsed Electric Field (PEF) and Ultrasonic Sound Techniques should have been included.  Their technology is very new but an increase of 15% polyphenol was observed in scientific studies.

Unfortunately, when it comes to fatty acids and phospholipids Krill oil should have been mentioned. This could be added to the products that meets the need for omega.

✔️Stories frequently given by "South African" producers, this created the perception as if the homeland of olives was South Africa.

✔️ Finally, an awareness of the consumer could be provided in the company of an interview with experts from our country. (Mr. Birsen Can Pehlivan, Dilşen Oktay Ertem, Serdar Unsal Öçal , Mr. Tahir Mujahid Özkaya) could be given with examples from Turkey with beautiful photographs Mistakes that the consumer fell could be included in the book in the form of questions and answers.

Footnote: I would rather listen to stories from our country, rather than listening to their stories, and that I find the life stories of South African examples and the experts of other countries too encouraging ...

Semih Cesur 💫

  (Names are hidden next to 💫)

Front Cover on Hürriyet Books and Art

 Google translation of the following article at: https://www.hurriyet.com.tr/kitap-sanat/zeytin-dalini-selaleden-almak-41467438

 Taking the olive branch from the waterfall

"The Story of Olive Oil from Table Olive to Table", written by Zeynep Delen Nircan, Patricia O’Hara and Richard Blatchly, explains the transformation of a seed into a seedling, a tree and the olive grain transformation into olive oil. A reference, a bedside book for many people who are interested in olives and olive oil.

“To the waterfall / fallen / branch of olive; / celalli / celalisin / cellali” Cemal Duraya
My real acquaintance with olives and olive oil was thanks to my wife's grandmother three years after I started olive cultivation as a profession and livelihood.
Maybe, because his whole life was spent next to an olive garden / in the olive groves, his grandmother, who now looks like an olive tree with pleasure, sorrow, wisdom and trust, looked at my swollen finger and asked why I did not apply olive oil.
From that moment on, I had the opportunity to see how olive oil is a very big part of life in the parts of Anatolia that live in olive oil. Unlike the geographies where any agricultural product is dominant, olives used to associate everything, that is, everything, from their livelihood to their wounds, from troubles to mouth flavors, from weddings to their children's school expenses.
Despite all this intertwinedness, I was surprised to see that many people are extremely unfamiliar with the history, technique, world-wide industry and future importance of olive oil, if we do not count a serious audience that has devoted this life. Olives, who are considered as one of the homeland of the olive tree, strongly oppose cold squeezing because they sometimes miss their abundance and give little product, sometimes they use it unlimitedly without knowing the fertilizer and the medicine, as if they 'kill them with love' and insistently claim that the olive oil of their garden is 'zero acid'.
However, in recent years, perhaps with the better appreciation of its economic value, the importance and the material and spiritual investments that young generation olives and olive oil producers, cooperatives and non-governmental organizations give to the technical and academic dimension of olive oil issue make us more hopeful about the future.
The book 'The Story of Olive Oil from Olive Oil to Table', published by Zeynep Delen Nircan, Patricia O’Hara and Richard Blatchly, gives the right to the subtitle in this sense: 'What every producer and consumer should know'.
The book describes the transformation of a seed to seedlings, trees, olive oil to olive oil, the journey of an olive grain, its 'circulation' in all its details. While watching the technical and chemical process of olive oil, 'golden liquid', we witness olive and olive oil experiences from almost every part of the world.

A REFERENCE, BEDSIDE BOOK
Transferring these experiences makes this book a reference and a bedside book for many people who are professionally interested in olive and olive oil. It is very valuable not only for people from the olive industry and agriculture, but also for everyone who is interested in this field, not only for the people from the olive industry and agriculture, but also for explaining all the principles and requirements of olive oil, which has become a very important sector in the world, by classifying it as an academic, and in a whole.
Along with this technical information, the historical and epic narrative of olive oil and its importance in heavenly religions allow us to read this academic research with pleasure. In addition, we see once again that the benefits and limitless use of olive oil are so wide that even those who know more or less are astounded.
Moreover, I care very much that the daily information about the olive tree, which is blessed as "immortal tree" and "wise tree" every time, is not given by being magazated in a way that contrasts with this blessing. The book says in many places, "Immortal wisdom can be explained like this."
In the preface to the book 'A Conquered People: Iran', Hamid Dabashi, the author of the book, says: “When you finish this book, you will learn more about Iran than many people who introduce themselves as an Iranian expert.” We can say the same for this book. When you read the book of Delen Nircan, O’Hara and Blatchly, you will have much more information than many people who are strongly interested in possible olives. It is hoped that with this type of research, the olive branch is taken from the waterfall where it falls and our country gets a place among the respected olive countries of the world.

(Hürriyet is the 3rd most sold newspaper in Turkey, selling over 200 thousand copies a day.) 

Behold, the Turkish Translation of "Chemical Story of Olive Oil"