Lucky Frantoio patrons can watch the entire olive oil making process from the comfort of their seat of our Mill Valley restaurant while enjoying an authentic contemporary Italian meal but have you ever wondered how olive oil is made?

The most important thing: good olives make good olive oil. Here are some containers of freshly picked olives that olive oil authority and Frantoio 's president Dr. Roberto Zecca personally selects for Frantoio. Olives have to be processed as soon as possible after harvest.

Thoroughly cleaning and hand picking among tons of olives to discard unwanted ones and foreign objects, it's another painstakingly step that makes Frantoio olive oils so special.

After getting washed the olives are poured into the crusher through a conveyor belt..

...and  are then crushed by 3200 lbs. of granite stone wheels until a uniform "paste" is formed.

The paste is then spread over the mats which act as strainers. Over the years traditional straw mats have been replaced by more hygienic nylon ones.

The mats are stacked on a cart and separated by heavy steel disks to keep them flat. Placed under the hydraulic press they will get squeezed to extract all liquids.

Looks like liquid gold! The olive oil is finally extracted by the centrifuge separator. The whole process took about 1 hour and from the initial 1/2 ton of olives only about 15 gallons of extra virgin olive oil will be produced.

The golden liquid is then hand bottled in limited quantities and is sold at our restaurant, at selected markets or from our convenient on line ordering.