olive oil Archives - attheitaliantable.com

There has been a lot of press lately regarding authentic vs adulterated extra virgin olive oil. Especially Italian, which everyone considers some of the best. In both taste and health benefits, extra virgin olive oil from Tuscany, Sicily and Puglia can’t be beat, and you feel good about buying it for yourself and your family.

Until they tell you it’s all fake and you can’t trust the label. Then what are you supposed to do?!

In some respects, it’s true: there is a lot of adulteration going on with extra virgin olive oil. You need to know who you can trust, where you can turn for good information. The label on the bottle says “Italy” or “Italian”, but the small print gives a key to where the oil comes from: ES -Spain, TU- Tunisia, GR-Greece, etc. Often the small sprint says “bottled in Italy”, which means the olives or oil can come from anywhere and are bottled in Italy. Berio and Bertolli, two of the only Italian olive oils available until about 25 years ago, were famous for this. At any rate, it gives a bad name to one of the most delicious and healthy products we have access to. That’s why a little knowledge can protect you and make you feel confident when purchasing olive oil.

In Italy, there are hundreds of comestible products that carry a seal of approval from the corresponding consortium governing that product. Think Parmigiano Reggiano DOP cheese, Aceto Balsamico, Brunello di Montalcino DOCG wine (in fact, all the hundreds of DOC/DOCG wines coming out of Italy). In short, there are governing bodies that control and regulate the growing, production, packaging and geographic area of hundreds of foods and drinks produced in Italy.

In America there is only one product that can carry its name only if the rules for ingredients, production and geographic area are followed. Anyone?? Bourbon: Must be 52% corn, aged a minimum of 2 years in brand new toasted oak barrels and must be made in the USA. One, out of all the things the US makes. By comparison, Italy has literally hundreds.

The consortiums that govern Italian DOP and IGP/IGT olive oil have a process they follow to determine that the product has followed all the rules for producing that oil: only the right olives that are grown, pressed and bottled in the given territory are given the seal that the producer proudly puts on the bottles. This seal has a serial number that can be used to see who grew the olives, where they were pressed and bottled. The process of pressing the extra virgin oil is also controlled to avoid heating the product, which deteriorates the oil and affects the acidity. That’s how important food is to Italians, that is an example of how seriously they take their olive oil.

Search out and purchase extra virgin olive oil that has either a DOP or an IGP/IGT seal on it. Make sure that the bottle has the year that it was made: olives are picked and pressed in November and December of each year and the oil should be as young as possible.

Look for a dark green bottle. Extra virgin olive oil can be very green when pressed if the olives used were predominately green. But it loses the green color over just a few months and will be golden yellow by the next summer. So avoid any green oil in a clear bottle; chlorophyll has most likely been added.

Italian extra virgin olive oil is one of the best products you can use and it is possible to get some really great stuff without traveling to Italy. Where to get the product? Gustiamo is an Italian import company that is very good and has several DOP oils to purchase. Costco brings in an excellent IGP olive oil from Tuscany and it’s available now. And obviously you can join us, Ecco La Cucina, on one of our culinary tours to Italy, which will give you many opportunities to purchase excellent oil to carry or ship home! I hope this information helps you to feel more comfortable in buying olive oil!

The first time I saw olives being pressed at a frantoio in Tuscany, it was a romantic affair straight out of the middle ages.

The large stone wheel, turned by a donkey, crushed the olives into a fine paste. The puree of olive was poured onto thick woven straw mats that were then stacked on top of one another and put into a press. As pressure was applied to the stack of mats, you could see the water and oil running out into the pan at the bottom. The liquid was centrifuged to separate the oil and everyone gathered around the fire, using freshly toasted bruschetta to taste the brand new oil. It was the freshest thing I’d ever tasted.

My next visit to the olive press, many years later, was a bit of a modern industrial shock. Instead of the stone wheel and donkey, there was a large closed metal machinery that was macerating the olives, rather than pressing them into a pulp. There were two centrifuges, one a large cylinder, the other smaller and attached to where the oil poured into the stainless steel pan.

You never saw the puree or the process; you just heard the loud machinery. The puree was centrifuged twice in another closed metal unit, and finally the oil exited at the end of the line, as beautiful a green liquid gold as I’d ever seen and smelling heavenly.

Using modern, high tech machinery is the current method for pressing and extracting oil from olives in Tuscany and southern Italy. There are hundreds of large and small olive presses all over Tuscany. Because the equipment is expensive and because the season is so short, lasting just two months in November and December, most press owners do something else during the year. My favorite mill, Pesavento, is an autobody shop the rest of the time!

The ancient techniques for pressing the olives and removing the oil was beautiful to see. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make very good oil. The straw mats were impossible to thoroughly clean and often caused the oil to go rancid quickly. Modern methods are much less romantic, not beautiful to look and and extremely noisy. But the quality of the oil is so much better that it’s given the entire industry a boost.

Trusting in Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Extra Virgin Olive Oil – modern vs traditional techniques