The Lecrin Valley’s Olive Oil Mill

During one of our out of town excursions, we spent a morning in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, amongst mountains, mist, a rustic little town, and an Olive Oil Mill left untouched since the 1920s.

I don’t know the name of the town or much about it other than it was located in the Lecrin Valley, is surrounded by olive orchards, and that the water in this town is famous for its healing properties. It’s thought by some to be a fountain of youth.

The water is bottled in a nearby plant; and, as a funny aside, one of the people with us emptied her bottle of water and re-filled it with the water from a local fountain. Shortly after she was told that the water she dumped out of her bottle was the same water she re-filled it with.

The mill was an unexpected surprise. Here you are taken back in time to an era where olive oil was crushed under large mills stones (powered by donkeys), pressed in mats, filtered in large tericotta vats, and then placed in communal storage jars for consumption throughout the year by members of the village.

The mill was used for hundreds of years by the community until the 1920s. And, when the doors closed for the last time, everything inside was left as is… frozen in time.

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