S01E02 [EN] A Few Days Decide Everything: Early Harvest in Extra Virgin Olive Oil:

Quality starts in the field, but it is at harvest that a producer decides how much of it survives. In this episode Eduard Pons, CEO of PONS and fourth generation of a family producing extra virgin olive oil in Lleida since 1945, opens up the most demanding moment of the year.The window for top-quality green oil lasts no more than ten days per variety, and it never falls on the same date twice. Eduard walks through how PONS reads it: NIR analysis on the fruit while it is still on the tree, historical series, and a staggered varietal design (Lecciana, Arbequina, Koroneiki, Arbosana) that spreads early harvest from mid-September to late October.Then the mechanics. Irrigation cut seven days out. Fruit between 45% and 55% moisture. Harvesters from first light, olives never above 26 °C. Five tonnes per micro-lot, twelve kilometres at most, thirty minutes to the mill. Two hours from tree to oil.And the part nobody puts on a label: early picking means giving up yield. PONS mills most of its oils at 11-13% yield instead of the 20%+ available weeks later. That gap is the price of polyphenols above 300 mg/kg, of pungency and bitterness, and of an oil that stays stable through the year.Origen PONS is the podcast where we explain extra virgin olive oil from the inside: the decisions behind each bottle, told by the people who make them.