Patrimoine Weekend
Benoît, at the huilerie in Amboise, was kept busy over Patrimoine Weekend. A steady stream of the curious came from near and far to see something rather special. The only original artisan nut oil mill left in the whole of Indre et Loire.
Although the excellent website explains everything anyone would ever want to know how the oil is made, it’s still well worth a visit to travel back in time to when the mill opened in 1834. The Time Lord would love it.
Well, not 1834 exactly. In those days a mule or a donkey turned the mill’s grindstone. The rings on the floor are still there. When Amboise was electrified, the mule was replaced with a (can’t resist the comparison) a wonderful Heath Robinson type contraption all leather and linen pulleys in and out of a DIY wooden box.
Walnut kernels or hazelnuts are put under the gigantic grindstone which was first put to work in 1785. That must be some sort of record. After about forty minutes under the grinding wheel, the paste is collected by hand. Comforting to know the Luddites among us are not alone in our spurning modern technology.
Wood fired ovens
The paste is heated on the original wood fired ovens before being hot pressed for half an hour at, for those who care about such things, 220 bar (3191 psi) pressure in the hundred year old or more MABILLE press. Made in Amboise, it must have been one of the last to come from the foundry.
Ten kilos of kernels produce five litres of oil. That’s a lot of nuts. Where do they all come from?
Six hundred and fifty enthusiastic individuals from all over the Touraine, determined to preserve this unique place, take walnuts and hazelnuts to the mill. As a reward, they automatically become members of the Huilerie Artisanale Amboise Association.
Anyone who has a nut tree experiences the painful joy of squirrels dropping nuts on your head when you least expect it. Less welcome is the myriad of trees appearing all over the garden where said squirrel buried nuts and forgot to retrieve them.
Worse, much worse, is discovering a crop of black nuts. This means only one thing. The husk fly has been busy burrowing its larvae into the husk making the kernels inedible.
If the nuts pass muster and go through the long process, the oil is decanted in steel vats for several days before being bottled.
Lucky locals can buy extra Virgin walnut and hazelnut oil straight off the press.
What a privilege.
Post by Pamela, photography by Mark.
