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.