'Maltempo in Abruzzo' - will the oil get through, as devastating storms wreck the Abruzzo countryside?

We're used to thinking of Italy as an enchanted place of sunshine, outdoor lunches in the shadow of some ancient monument, and sundowners round the pool.

Not this week.    The central Abruzzo region, where the olives for Stroud Green Olive Oil are grown, has been hit by devastating weather.   First blizzards, then floods.   Storms and snow have destroyed 2,700 hectares (that's 10 square miles) of vineyards in the districts of Pescara, Chieti and Teramo.   The city of Pescara is under water.

Just a few days ago, folk were in shirtsleeves, harvesting the trees.  Now the weather is so bad the Abruzzo region has called for a state of emergency.

The mountain people of Abruzzo are used to cold winters - but it's rarely this bad, or so early.  In the Majella region, where Stroud Green Olive Oil comes from, summers are baking hot, spring and autumn are balmy with pleasant days and cool evenings and.   Winter always brings snow to the mountain peaks,but rarely much to the green valleys below 600 metres or to the coastal plain.

When the snow does hit the mountains, roads are closed, cars are fitted with snow tires and chains, the roads are lined with stranded lorries and travel is difficult and hazardous - Abruzzo drivers are used to that.    On the plus side, the ski-ing can be excellent.  Two of central Italy's best ski resorts, Roccaraso and Pescocostanzo, are little more than half an hour away into the mountains from the Aventino olive groves.   It's hard to believe you can ski so far south, far from the garish tourist traps of the Italian alps.

This snowfall has been different.     The severe weather arrived in late November, after a fortnight of almost constant rain - a downpour that nearly (but not quite) put paid to the Stroud Green Olive Oil harvest.   The snow came down in sheets, blanketing the entire region from the peaks of the Gran Sasso as far as the Adriatic beaches.  The picturesque ski resort of Pescocostanzo, just over the mountains, has been transformed into an alpine-style scene weeks before the first skiers usually arrive.

But the weather has had serious implications. Blizzards have blocked roads and flattened ancient vineyards across the region.   One wine grower in Loreto Aprutino estimates he has lost half of his 50-year-old vines, the source of local Trebbiano d'Abruzzo wines.  Hundreds more hectares of the destroyed vineyards are the source of the famous Montepulciano d'Abruzzo wine, so familiar in every London Italian restaurant.

Subsequent snow melt has swollen the rivers and transformed streams into torrents cascading through houses and villages and making travel all b ut impossible.    I generally keep an eye on the Abruzzo weather from London, but I only became aware of how serious it is after seeing photographs of the lake close to Casa della Meridiana almost full to overflowing, and video of the Aventino River just a few hundred metres from the house seemingly on the point of bursting its banks - so much in spate that police closed the road bridge.

Duncan, the driver who will bring the next consignment of Stroud Green Olive Oil back to London next week, told me by phone he had been obliged to stop deliveries in Abruzzo because of the weather - 'You can't drive anywhere - roads swept away, trees down.'

The rain and snow means he has not been able to finish harvesting the olives from his own 500 olive trees, so the olives will be wasted.  On top of all that there was a further small earthquake north of L'Aquila just a couple of days ago which rattled teacups and caused alarm right actross the region.

Fortunately, Duncan expects to pick up the olive oil from the hotel basement where it is stored and bring it back to London N4, so it looks like Stroud Green Olive Oil will get through.   But my heart goes out to the kind people of Abruzzo who have lost their vines, trees, olives and livelihoods because of the weather this year.
 

It's just arrived in Stroud Green.

Words fail me.

Half an hour ago the doorbell rang.  It was Duncan, the van driver, just arrived from Italy with a very special load.   Just 24 hours ago I was still in central Italy, while Duncan was driving across France with a consignment of 13 tins of olive oil in the back.   This evening it arrived.

What an exciting moment.   The first taste!    The past four days in Italy have been so hectic and non-stop we haven't even had an opportunity to taste any of the oil, which came in sealed containers straight onto the truck.  How to describe the experience?

Just amazing.  This oil lives up to expectations.  It's a thick, luminous green the colour of melon juice, and cloudy.  It gives off a powerful aroma of grass, leaves, twigs and olive branches.  Tasting it is like sipping at some kind of slippery, velvety soup, with a slight astringency and marked peppery aftertaste.

It's so completely fresh and utterly unlike anything in a bottle off a supermarket shelf.

This is a great day.   It's the real thing.  No more to add.

Finding the perfect oil mill in Italy - new versus old-style

Picture two very different olive oil mills in the Italian countryside, both producing Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

One looks very old-fashioned:  Two massive stone wheels trundling round and round in a trough, mashing whole fresh olives into a pulp.  You can imagine a mule doing the work (though it's run by electricity now)..

In this mill, the pulp is smeared onto basket-weave discs, which are piled up into a tower and then squeezed from above by a hydraulic press until the juice drips out. Simple.

 

 

Hey presto - Extra Virgin Olive Oil!   This traditional mill is in the comune of Civitella Messer Raimondo, a small hilltop village 160 kilometres east of Rome, on the edge of a mountain range called the Majella, in the Chieti province of Abruzzo.

Take way the electricity and the hydraulic power, and this is essentially the way they've been making olive oil since pre-Roman times. Big stones, heavy weights.

Up the valley to mill number two, ten kilometres away.  Here everything is metallic, new and shiny.  No stones, instead a row of sealed chambers with glass windows where the olives have been macerated for an hour with blades. The mash is pumped into a torpedo-shaped steel centrifuge.

This spins so fast that the oil is forced out of the solid olive waste under enormous pressure .  A further spin to remove superfluous water, and pure Extra Virgin oil is trickling out through a steel pipe.

It's the modern way- every new olive oil mill is built to this design.  This is the Masciontonio mill at Caprafico, Chieti province.

Both methods comply with the legal definition of Extra Virgin Olive Oil - extraction by pure mechanical means, without any heat, chemicals or solvents ('first cold pressing').

So which is better - traditional or new-fangled?    The fresh oil from the two mills looks pretty much the same - green, thick and cloudy.  It may well taste and smell very similar.   Does one method of extraction consistently produce a higher quality of Extra Virgin Oil than the other?  Is traditional superior to new-fangled?  Or is modern the better way?

This is not an easy question - each style has its own proponents.  Yesterday we set out to find out.   Half the olives destined to become Stroud Green Olive Oil have gone to one type of mill, and half to the other.

Our own freshly-picked fruit, from the half acre of olive trees below Casa della Meridiana, has been sent to two modern centrifuge mills.  We'll be collecting the last of the pressed oil tomorrow, and we're expecting a yield of around 45 litres.

However to fulfil demand, we've sourced a further 50 litres of pure, just-pressed oil made by our next door neighbour, who swears by the traditional mill.  It's also excellent oil - and we've tasted it.  So will anyone be able to detect any difference in the way the two were milled?

They both look great so far.  Perhaps we'll be able to make a judgement at the olive oil tasting in Stroud Green next week.  Watch this space.

The Stroud Green Olive Oil harvest - day one

We've started picking - the dawn of a day with blue sky and no rain meant we were able to get the Stroud Green Olive Oil harvest under way at Casa della Meridiana yesterday.  Hooray!  

In the course of about five hours, we harvested five trees and picked 120 kilos of beautiful, luscious green and black olives, before another rainstorm stopped play.    We tok the freshly-harvested fruit straight to an olive mill up the valley, for processing.  Here's my step-by-step guide to a special Extra Virgin day in pictures:

1.  The team:  Ben, Peter, Mike and Bobbie, plus tools of the trade -  ladder, secateurs and shears, saws, hand-held olive rakes, and old clothes.

2. The net and hand rake.  Spread the enormous nylon net around each tree, then rake off the green and black olives into it.   Very, very satisfying and compulsive.   Cutting down high branches to bring down the fruit is smart, since the tree has to be drastically pruned anyway. 

3. High-level picking.  Don't tell Health and Safety.

4.  Ground crew.    Now you pour the olives from the net into special crates, which let in air so the olives won't spoil.   Yesterday's harvest yielded seven crates.

5.  Scheduled break.  Not tea.

6.  At t'mill.  This frantoio (olive mill) is run by a co-operative in the nearby village of Piana La Roma.   It has a very modern centrifuge press.   We'll gradually try out all the local mills to find the best quality and cleanest.

7.  Weighed i.  This is Ben with 120 kilos of newly picked olives, behind him some of the scores of crateloads of olives similarly waiting to be pressed. We'll pick up the oil tomorrow or the day after.

8.  Ready for pressing.  Here they measures olives in quintali - a quintale is 100kilos - and our labours today yielded 1.2 quintali in the local jargon.  This is a good crop.  

It looks like we'll harvest nearly 3 quintali this year, about 30 litres or more of good 'Stroud Green Special Reserve' extra virgin oil from our own trees.  We have seven olive trees to go, so we'll finish the job as soon as the weather dries up again.

But now we've got some hard decisions to make.  

It's Saturday - and it's raining again.  By mid day, we'll have to decide whether to go with what we've got, and have the first half pressed, or wait for better weather forecast for tomorrow and try to harvest the rest.  There's always the risk of the olives spoiling.   No wonder farmers are always watching the weather.

Stroud Green's olives are still a little moist

Here are the olives that will produce Stroud Green Olive Oil Special Reserve - the olives grown on our own small plantation - as they were today, looking a little damp.  Soaked, in fact.  We're waiting for dry weather, hoping to start the picking in the next couple of days.

It's unpleasant picking in the rain, and the mud gets in.    So that's a no-no.   For today it's a question of stiff upper lip, a drop of red wine, and waiting for the weather to improve.  The forecast is for better weather in the next couple of days.   

Watch this space.

The countdown begins....damply.

The countdown to Stroud Green Olive Oil Harvest Day has begun.

At break of dawn this morning, the advance guard of your crack olive-picking team left Stroud Green and headed for the olive fields of eastern Italy.  We're on our way to Abruzzo.   As soon as we get out of the airport at Pescara, gateway to the little-known mountainous region, this is what we see:

Serried ranks of cloudy, new season 'novello' olive oil!

In Britain, your local Asda might feature baked beans. In Italy, the pile-em-high show-stopper in the Auchun hypermarket is extra virgin olive oil so fresh you could mistake it for pea soup, just made from some of the zillions of olive trees that blanket the hillsides. It's all ultra-local produce, and it's the real thing. This augurs well.

Just one more observation for now: it's wet.  Very wet.  Wetter than a whale's whatsit.   Wetter, probably, than I've ever seen it;  the drive through absolutely drenching curtains of rain along flooded roads into the mountains today has not been the easiest (translation: one of the most perilous and trying journeys ever).)   This does not bode well for the olive harvest:  we need two dry days before Monday to achieve it.

We are hoping that O-Day (Olive-Picking Day No 1) will be Friday, so we can get it to the mill in time.   It could be a cliffhanger.  Watch this space.

How to identify healthy supermarket Extra Virgin Olive Oil

There's a brand of extra virgin oil sold at a market near here in London N4 which advertises itself thus: "Brimming with goodness and healthy for your heart. Packed full of vitamins and antioxidants to give you a lift."

Wow - doesn't that make you feel like gulping down a thimbleful?  Like Irn-Bru with a health certificate.  But is it entirely accurate? Hmmm........

Yes, Extra Virgin Oil is good for you.   And this approach certainly presses all the right buttons for today's lifestyle-aware city-dweller: a stress-busting substance, that will give you more energy while at the same time protecting you against the consequences of overwork.  And natural to boot.  One gulp, and you'll be climbing Everest.

But there's a bit more to it than that.  Good quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil may be a superfood (and the brand I refer to is undoubtedly the genuine stuff and a very good, healthy product).  But not all olive oil - not even all 'extra virgin oil' - is the same, and with the world so full of snake-oil salesmen, it helps to know what to look out for.

One of the most interesting discoveries I've made lately is that there is medical science behind the assertion that if it tastes bitter, it's doing you good.   Really healthy Extra Virgin Olive Oil should have that astringent aftertaste.

So here is my quick five point guide to buying the best health-giving olive oil to put on your food, as opposed to a substance you might use to lubricate the car's crankshaft.   Always read the label - but pay attention to the taste as well.

           * The oil must be Extra Virgin, not plain old Olive Oil or (perish the idea) Olive Pomace Oil

           * It should be as fresh as possible, with a grassy aroma and a pronounced peppery afterburn.

           * It doesn't matter too much about the colour.

           * Oil labelled as 'light' isn't any healthier than ordinary - in fact it may be worse

           * It has to be the real thing and not illicitly blended, refined, chemically treated, contaminated or adulterated - and that's the hard bit.  Do you really know where it came from?

I am not a nutritionist, dietician or doctor.  But I'm ready to accept that real Extra Virgin Olive Oil has health-giving qualities.  This is not the place for a science lesson - you'll need an advanced degree in Wikipedia Studies for that - but many nutritionists now seem to agree that the high proportions of organic compounds and substances such as polyphenols, hydrocarbons, vitamins, oleocanthol, oleic acid and monounsaturated fat in Extra Virgin Oil have positive health benefits.

Oleocanthol, for example, is a powerful anti-inflammatory.   Polyphenols are potent anti-oxidants (good for breaking down 'free radicals' and preventing some cancers..  Oleic acid bolsters the immune system.  Mono-unsaturated fat appears to promote 'good' cholesterol and cardiovascular health.

Few of these volatile organic compounds, though, survive the refining, chemical assault or heat treatment used in the creation of cheaper, non-Extra Virgin olive oils, or when Extra Virgin Oil is commercially blended with low-grade oil.

What's more, some of these natural compounds appear to be responsible for the unique taste and smell of Extra Virgin oil - a complex combination of pungency, astringency and bitterness with velvety texture so obvious to anyone who cares to sample a teaspoonful of real, fresh Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

It's a peppery afterburn, not unpleasant, which sometimes makes you cough.   No afterburn, no health benefit, is one possible conclusion.

So forget the blandishments of the marketing men - the surest way to know if an olive oil is doing you good is to taste it.  Give it a gulp.  The more peppery the taste, the healthier it is likely to be.   You may not do stupid things faster and with more energy - but you might live a longer and happier life.

Review: Italian Farmers. It's unique, and a great new store in Stroud Green

A big welcome to the newest, most authentic delicatessen, food shop and cafe on the block in Stroud Green.  Italian Farmers opened at 168 Stroud Green Road a few days ago.

Ciao, amici!  It certainly looks the part.  There are displays of mouthwatering pasta and prosciutto in the window, glimpses of preserves, farro, cheese, wine and olive oil inside.

But this is no ordinary Italian deli.  It turns out there's quite a story behind the Italian Farmers shop.  This is an Italian grocery with knobs (of parmigiano) on - a shop dedicated to aggressively 'real' country farm food from Italy, proper Italian produce, and to trouncing the British habit of accepting fake or contraband 'Italian' grub.    It's a smack in the face for the food fraudsters.  And it's the only shop of its kind in Britain.

It's an outlet for a chain of Italian 'farmers direct'-type producers, run by one of the biggest Italian farming cooperatives, Coldiretti, under the slogans 'Campagna Amica' and 'Made in Italy'.   Campagna Amica has scores of shops and farmers markets all over Italy supplied by the thousands of Coldiretti small farmers, and the watchword is authentic food straight from the farm, ecologically sound, and with minimal food miles.

Coldiretti is well known and highly-esteemed in Italy.  This is their first and only shop in Britain - it might be the only one anywhere outside Italy.   And why choose Britain?   That's interesting - apparently this country is the world leader in 'fake Italian' food, from spaghetti to Bolognese sauce, Parmesan and 'Italian wine' kits.  Internet sites describe a massive recent hike in as 'contraband food' (prodotti taroccati) which is claimed as Italian, but actually made somewhere else like Tunisia, Spain or here in the UK.

I know this is a big problem with 'Italian olive oil - hence this web site.  Overall, food fraud is a lucrative racket that (unsurprisingly) the Italian mafia has infiltrated, but big international food companies from every part of the world are also guilty, by mis-stating the true origin of their products and often mislabelling them, all in the name of profit.  As usual, it's the bottom line that counts, not quality.

Coldiretti's mission is to counter this with genuine, authentic Italian produce straight from the farm gate.   And they have chosen Stroud Green to begin their campaign in Britain, apparently, because this is a hub of the Italian community in London - and it's close to Arsenal stadium.

Italian Farmers is not cheap.  Expect to pay two or even three times as much for some of the products here compared with what might seem an equivalent in the supermarket or another deli. Artichokes in oil, for example, cost more than £7, compared with a supermarket brand for under £3.   But these are not the usual and familar brand names and products to the UK High Street.  This is the real thing, from small Italian producers, not a massive food combine.

So there - no longer any need to zip over to the Campagna Amica farmer's market at the Circus Maximus in Rome (though admittedly, at these eye-watering prices, it might be cheaper to do so.)  Good luck to them:  cosmopolitan and authentic Stroud Green should be proud to welcome such an original and authentic store in the mix.  Good luck, ragazzi!  Support this shop if you can.

So, will it be Crouch End Olive Oil next?

Stroud Green Olive Oil - that raises a few eyebrows. 

The commonest question from wags seeing a bottle for the first time is 'Where's the olive grove?  I didn't know they grew olives in Stroud Green!' (For anyone outside the area, Stroud Green - despite its countrified name - is a fairly gritty, but vibrant, friendly and popular, inner city North London suburb.)

There has recently been some discussion on the area's Stroud Green.Org community Internet site about why the name is 'Stroud Green Olive Oil' at all.  Why not change the name from 'Stroud Green' to 'Crouch End' olive oil, or something altogether more generic and less local, in order to widen its appeal.

Here are my thoughts:

(Already posted to www.stroudgreen.org.)

On the question of the name, yes, I did play around with different ideas. I considered Crouch End Olive Oil, and why not also Muswell Hill Olive Oil, Stoke Newington Olive Oil, Finchley Olive Oil?

As it happens, I've have a top class advisor on this - someone in the branding/labelling business who is actually a professional label designer for the likes of Heinz etc - and who is also very generous with his time.  He designed and drew up the artwork for my label, all absolutely free.   So I have thousands of pounds worth of goodwill alone on the label.   (And he is a Stroud Greener to boot - at least until recently - and was a regular contributor under a pseudonym to stroudgreen.org, though he's now moved out of the area.)

He has advised against 'Crouch End Olive Oil' and the other variants. Why?

I would have to seek clarification from him for the exact argument, but my recollection is that from a branding perspective 'Stroud Green Olive Oil' works, on several levels - it's a bit of a joke, it's improbable, the name is 'green', it's inner-city but not a well-known or pretentious place (like Hampstead), it's an area with loyal fans and known to the cognoscenti, there's potentially an (admittedly small) core local following, with capacity to expand if the 'brand' ever became successful.

Very importantly, it is NOT generic Italian 'Tuscan Olive Oil' with a fake Italian name and a picture of olive trees, blue skies, peasants and Italian flags.  On all these counts it scores high on the 'Eh?' factor, and comes across as distinctive, different and, in fact, authentic.....   Which of course it is.

I did lobby for Crouch End Olive Oil as an additional selling point but my friend advised against it because it would dilute the brand.    

Two other factors - I personally have no connection with Crouch End, so to use that name would be slightly misleading and rather lame.  Stroud Green is a completely separate place, though only just over the hill.  And another thing: it's my personal view that people in Crouch End are less likely to see the joke implicit in the name if it were to be other than 'Stroud Green Olive Oil'.   'Crouch End Olive Oil'?   Yeah!   Crouch End is exactly the kind of upper middle class place you would EXPECT to have extra virgin olive oil by the gallon in the kitchens and an olive oil named after it - there's no double take.   People would just see it as an attempt to exploit the name.    Which it would be.

In fact my whole point in the oil and this blog is to drive home the notion that (as in the Mediterranean) good quality olive oil is everybody's right, not something exclusive but a healthy, natural food for everybody.   EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL FOR THE MASSES - that's what I say!

Another commentator observed that if I called it 'Crouch End Olive Oil' and got it stocked in the right Crouch End shops, 'watch the tweets, blogs, radio play ('Crouch Enders') and Guardian feature flood in....'

Well, I do have an interview and picture story lined up with the Ham and High in a couple of weeks' time, and surely the tweets, blogs, the Guardian food pages, Olive Magazine, Jamie Oliver and the soap opera can only follow.......

What do you think?   SGOO or CEOO?   Which scores highest?   Let me have your opinion.

Should we have an oil tasting bar in London?

Here's a conundrum. London (UK) is today Earth's greatest food-loving city - a capital of world cuisine, a rich mulligan of the very highest quality international tuck.

So search the Internet for 'olive oil tasting bars in London', and what do you find?

Yes, it's a an olive oil tasting bar in London all right, and a very nice one too.  That's London, Ontario.

Ontario, Canada.  The Pristine Olive Tasting Bar at 462 Cheapside Street is that city's "first tasting bar to specialize in real, fresh, certified Ultra Premium extra virgin olive oils" and stocks 24 different olive oils from around the world for customers to taste.  Find one you like and it can be poured into a flask and yours for up to $42 (£25) a litre.

But not a single olive oil tasting bar in London, England.

Over in north America, they're all at it. Today there are at least nine 'premium'-type olive oil and balsamic vinegar tasting bars in Canadian cities. Most have opened within the last two years. Each bar has its own take on the perceived luxury and trendiness of extra virgin olive oil: The Olive Oil Emporium, Liquid Gold, Dana Shortt Gourmet, Pristine, the Unrefined Olive, Emulsify, Frescolio, Olive-me, Olive That!

In the United States - I haven't tried to count them - there must be hundreds of olive oil and vinegar tasting bars too (here's a partial list from The Olive Source).  All driven by extra virgin oil's perceived desirability, entrepreneurial flair, and the services of a couple of smart olive oil importing companies.

But very few in Europe. And not one anywhere in the UK, as far as I can tell (with the exception, perhaps, of some oil behind the bar at a Somerset pub).

So why haven't Londoners in Britain taken to olive oil tasting bars?

The answer, in my opinion, is that we are much too sensible.

Yes, on the face of it getting people to taste and appreciate real extra virgin olive oil has to be a Good Thing.  But several things need to be said about these tasting bars.  Real extra virgin olive oil is much too important to leave to the trendy olive oil barristas.

First - in my opinion, they make extra virgin olive oil appear far too exclusive and uber-trendy, the expensive preserve of the rich and spoiled. This is Ultra Premium Extra Virgin Olive Oil with Capital Letters.

It's true that a very few top quality extra virgin oils are, like some wines, so rare and delicious as to be sought after at almost any price. But in the real world, genuine extra virgin olive oil is something that has been part of everyday life for millions of farmers, smallholders and working class folk throughout the world - and should continue to be.   In fact, in places like Italy and the South of France, it is.  The difference nowadays is that almost all the 'olive oil' commonly available to us northern food-lovers through our supermarket economy is not the real thing at all.

Every Italian family has a few olive trees somewhere, and a nonna who's done the harvest ever since she was knee-high to a sickle.  It's normal.   Extra virgin olive oil is normal too, and you shouldn't have to go to a slick Californian-style oil tasting bar to experience it.

Second - at some tasting bars, it's said, you can't even be absolutely certain the premium oil you've bought at a premium price really is the genuine stuff. Sure, they say it is.  They provide labels that look like scientidfic text books.  But if you look at this thread on the Truth In Olive Oil blog, there seems good reason to believe some of it may not be what it is claimed.

And third - it looks depressingly like a fad.   Fads are dangerous. When the Ultra Premium Extra Virgin Olive Oil bubble bursts in a year or two, and all the tasting bars are charity shops again, the olive oil business will be back as it was - only worse. Unrealistic expectations will have been created, then dashed.

Much better to work for a world where you can simply turn up at your local supermarket and buy a litre of extra virgin oil confident that you know what you're getting, and at a price somewhat less than an olive tycoon's ransom.  Not mixed, not blended, not refined, not chemical, just oil from a farmer's olive patch.  Too much to ask?  I don't think so.   That's what this blog is all about.

Make sure you do have a real Extra Virgin season.

Posters going up!

Posters for the Extra Virginity oil tasting in November going up at Il Piccolo Diavolo tonight!

Announcement - now free delivery to most North London postcodes

Following requests, FREE DELIVERY of Stroud Green Olive Oil is now extended to most London N postcodes around Stroud Green!

N1, N2, N4, N5, N6, N7, N8, N10, N15, N16, N17, N19, N22

Deliveries will start after the oil arrives in late November and free deliveries to these areas will last at least up until Christmas on any orders received by then (and not just on pre-orders).   The oil will be delivered from November 25th.

Pre-order Stroud Green Olive Oil by November 15th at a discount

You can also book here for 'Extra Virginity - an olive oil tasting night' at il Piccolo Diavolo on November 25th.   Places are limited.   Only £25 for bookings made by Nov 18th.

Have an Extra Virgin season!

An excellent book on Extra Virgin olive oil

As we greedily await that first trickle of glistening extra virgin oil from Abruzzo in around a month's time, I'm getting into the mood by revisiting some books and articles.

At the top of my list is a thoroughly good read, journalist Tom Mueller's Extra Virginity: the Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil.

 

Mr Mueller is an American investigative journalist who has made it his business to - so to speak - immerse himself in extra virgin oil.    I tip my hat to him.   As a journalist myself with occasional pretensions to investigative work, this is a book I would like to have written.   I owe him for a lot more than my blog title.   

Here is a short volume that explores the olive oil business from its most fragrant and appealing heights to the murkiest depths.  It's a companion, a trove of information, and a muse for the oil-inspired. 

Mueller starts his book in an oil-tasting laboratory in Milan.    He's in the company of a man named Flavio Zaramella, a 66-year-old Italian businessman, a professional olive oil taster.  (Yes, there are such people - they are called sommeliers, like wine experts.)   

Zamarella and his expert companions are sitting in separate cubicles, waiting for oil samples in tulip-shaped glasses dunked in a thermostatically-controlled yoghurt-maker to reach a prescribed temperature of precisely 28 degrees C.   If that seems a touch odd, wait for what happens next.  Yes, the sommeliers taste the oil - it's how they do it that gets you sitting up.  The eight tasters sniff and taste each of the six samples in turn using a technique apparently known as stripaggio.

This, says Mr Mueller, is a special gurgling inhalation of oil and air, a kind of 'volcanic slurp' that coats the taste buds and wafts the oil's aroma into the nasal passages.... "They took a mouthful of oil. And then, as if they'd all been stricken by an oil-induced seizure, they began sucking in air violently at the corners of their mouths...."

I've tried this, and it's not something I really recommend.   Especially in polite company.  But it does rather make the point on which the whole romance of real extra-virgin olive oil depends - it's a magical substance which has to look, smell, feel and taste right.  Just like wine.  Stripaggio-ing away, the tasters are grading each oil for its flavour, aroma, intensity and texture, and looking out for imperfections like 'rancid', 'fusty', 'vinegary', 'muddy' or 'metallic'.

"Oil talk sounds like effete nonsense, until you actually put a good oil in your mouth," the delightful-sounding Zaramella tells Mueller - who then has a go himself and rather gilds the lily here by reporting that "tasting these oils was like strolling through a botanic garden, touring a perfume factory, and taking a long drive through spring meadows with the windows down, all at the same time."

Forget volcanic slurping.  You don't need to bother with a temperature-controlled yoghurt-maker and a tulip-shaped glass, or to master the doubtful art of the stripaggio, to distinguish real extra-virgin olive oil from a poor imitation.   Next time you buy a bottle of oil, just sniff and then taste it - really taste it.   No ciabatta, no dipping, just a little oil.   Half a teaspoonful will do the trick.  Does it have a pleasantly herby, fresh flavour, or does it taste like sump oil?   Does it make you cough (good) - or gag (bad)?   More on that later.

Anyway, that's the taste test at the heart of the 'sublime and scandalous' olive oil business Mr Mueller's fine book goes on to analyse, investigate and expose, and the matter this blog will explore between now and ev-day (extra-virgin day).   (If you are in the N4 area, we'll be having a tasting on November 25th.)

It's certainly the flavour of botanic garden, perfume factory and spring meadows that we'll be hoping for when we catch the first mugful of new oil from the Abruzzo mill in the middle of next month

Here's looking forward to an Extra Virgin season.

Counting down the days........

It's begun - the Italian olive oil harvest!

And this how it looks when the first gush flows out of the olive mill. [Picture from www.lucciola.me]  Doesn't it just get the juices flowing?  Now we're counting down the days until we start picking our own!

We know the harvest is under way because the first Facebook messages started arriving this morning, bearing images like the one above, of the magical green liquid just off the trees.  This one was posted by my Abruzzo friend Sammy. 

                                     

The new oil is, she observed, 'Soooooo good you almost wanted to dive into it.'    It may look radioactive, but it really is that green when it's top quality oil freshly pressed and from an ancient olive grove in a DOP area - nothing added and nothing taken away.

Olive plants are wondrous trees.  They fruit late in the year.  In mountainous Abruzzo, where our oil comes from, very late indeed - the picking usually starts at the end of October and can go on into late November or even early December.    Most of the olive trees in Abruzzo grow high up, sometimes well above 600m, where the fruit is late to mature and ripen.    We'll pick ours in mid-November..

Sadly, we don't live in Italy all year round but every autumn we recognise the more traditional signs that the olive-picking season has begun.   The little three-wheeler trucks called apes parked in the lane loaded with empty crates. The shouts and calls from under the trees.  People gathered in small family groups with boxes and packed lunches, laying out nets.  Somebody glimpsed balanced up a ladder.

So another olive oil harvest - la raccolta - has begun, the latest in a tradition going back four thousand years.  Hooray!  In this blog, I'll take my readers through the final few weeks of our own Abruzzo olive oil's progress from tree to olive mill and fustino (steel barrel), and its journey onward from the mountains of east central Italy to London.  Can't wait to get started.

Do join me in our Extra Virgin season!   And please leave a comment - I want to read your thoughts.

Welcome to Stroud Green Olive Oil

It's back!  By popular demand, new season Stroud Green Olive Oil will arrive in N4 on November 25th..
    

   

Weather permitting, we'll harvest the trees at Casa della Meridiana in mid-November and bring the extra-virgin fresh-pressed oil back to London right away.  To meet the demand we'll be bringing in more of the green nectar from our next door neighbours too.  Pre-order extra virgin oil at a discount by November 15th, with free local delivery.   And this year you can soon you can follow the progress of this year's harvest on the Extra Virginity Blog!.

  ORDER HERE

Have an Extra Virgin season!

Thanks!   Krappyrubsnif (aka Mike Durham)