Posts Tagged virgin olive oils

Colavita Extra Virgin Olive Oil

On our last trip to Tuscany, Maria (my business partner) and I could not help but notice that wherever you found grapevines, you also found olive trees growing. It appears that both fruits thrive on the same “terroir” (see note below), whether you are in Tuscany or Northern California. In the Molise region of Italy, a quaint and rural region located in the south-central part of the country, just southeast of Rome (where some of my family still lives) you’ll find an agricultural region famous for the production of olive oil, cheese and wine. It was here that a small family business was born. This family operated a stone mill for crushing homegrown olives, used to produce fine extra virgin olive oil. That was four generations ago, and today that company, Colavita Extra Virgin Olive Oil, is alive and thriving, firmly grounded in its roots with production facilities in the same Molise region (as well as a facility in nearby Pomezia).

Over the years, the Colavita family became masters at the craft of blending extra virgin oils from different types of olives grown in Apulia and nearby regions. Different varieties of olives ripen at different times. As a result, growers often mill batches of single varietals separately. As Fran Gage tells us in her book, The New American Olive, “This lets them blend olive oils to their liking, mixing greener oil from an earlier harvest with oil that is riper and mellower, or mixing oil with a stronger taste profile together with a more delicate one. A skillful blender, working with good lots of extra virgin olive oil can produce finished olive oils with complex character.” What an art!

Colavita is no stranger to Americans, who have seen it on their store shelves for years. However, it seems there has been an awakening to fine extra virgin oils grown in THIS country recently. California extra virgin olive oils, like California wines, are making a splash on the international scene. California oils are taking gold medals over oils from Italy, Greece and Spain. And every year those medals grow in number. In the 2007 Los Angeles International EVOO Competition, one of the most prestigious in the world, 396 oils were received for competition from 274 producers from 16 countries, including Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Israel and France. California oils garnered 101 medals – 34 of them gold. Just a year later, in 2008, in competition with 510 oils from 334 producers, California received 169 medals, 53 of them gold. Do you see a pattern? And with all of this competition, you and I are the benefactors. Shopping for fine, artisan, extra virgin olive oil made in the USA is not difficult these days. They are popping up at farmers’ markets, online shoppes and gourmet food stores everywhere.

Invite a few of your foodie friends over one night. Crack open two or three different bottles of fine, California born, extra virgin oil. Add some crusty Italian or Portuguese bread and start dipping. And have yourself an olive oil tasting – California style! Works for THIS Philly girl! No designated driver necessary…

Olive Oil – Who’s Cheatin’ Who?

One fancy bottle is labeled as ‘extra virgin olive oil’ and carries a price tag of $37.50 for one half liter. On the shelf below is another bottle – also labeled as ‘extra virgin olive oil’ but its price is $37.88 for three liters – twelve times more product for the same price.

How is it possible for two products of equal quality to sell for such disparate pricing? The answer is simple: It is not possible. When was the last time you saw one egg selling for the same price as a dozen eggs?

Who in their right mind would pay thirty-seven dollars for a half-liter bottle of a product when a three liter bottle of the exact same product, that is its exact equal in quality, is available just a few inches away?

Again, the answer is simple: No one would. The price disparity between products claiming to be of equal quality is a tacit admission by retailers that the cheap concoctions they are selling labeled as ‘extra virgin olive oil’ are in reality cheap mixes of cheap oils.

Why is it so hard to find real extra virgin olive oil at an affordable price? In the words of one food distributor: “The distributors control what the customer wants and gets.” In other words, the answer lays not so much in what the consumer wants as what the distributors want to sell. What do distributors want to sell consumers? Again, our food distributor answers: “do you have blends and pomice (pomace)?” Without having blends …. it is not enough.”

What is a ‘blend’? The word seems to imply that it is a ‘blend’ of different types of extra virgin olive oils, the truth is that the word ‘blend’ is a misleading way of saying a mix of different, including non-olive, oils.

Britain’s The Telegraph recently reported that “Almost half the ‘Italian’ oil sold inside Italy is … from olives of an unknown provenance.” And olive oils sold in supermarkets in the UK are “blended” from a variety of different oils before being sold as Italian extra virgin. According to Italy’s agriculture minister, “This sort of fraud damages Italy’s image”.

Distributors and retailers are telling consumers that they – the consumers – want olive oil that is packed in Italy, as if where the olive oil was ‘packed’ had any impact on its quality. However, according to one recent report, between 2006 and 2007, over 3,200,000 liters of fraudulent olive oil was sold under niche (or fancy) labels throughout Italy. And that a “large part of the product ended up abroad”.

Packers misrepresent legitimate olive growers and olive oil mills by purchasing pomace oil, refined oil, refined hazelnut oil and other oils on the open market and reselling the mix – or blend (does that sound better?) – as ‘extra virgin olive oil’, ‘Packed in Italy’.

So then, who’s cheating who? Does the blame lie solely with the packers? Or is there more to it?

Exporters and importers are using false documentation and labeling to present the cheap mixes as olive oil and thereby circumvent national and international laws that require that all ingredients be traced to their place of origin. Exporters and importers also use archaic and misleading terms such as ‘cold pressed’ and ‘first pressing’ to describe the product when in reality none of the olive oil is extracted by an olive press (if it is, then show us a picture of the olive press). They don’t know and they don’t care where the product came from, how it was produced or when it was produced.

Distributors and retailers, rather than simply requiring that importers provide them with proof of quality and origin of the product they sell, (such as a map and picture of the mill where the olive oil is supposedly produced), are concerned more about stocking fees and pricing margins. Distributors and retailers employ a ‘don’t ask, don’ tell’ policy when deciding what to stock and sell to the public.

Is it possible for consumers to find real extra virgin olive oil bottled on site at the mill where it is extracted from locally grown olives? Yes it is.

Distributors and retailers need to verify both the origin and the actual – not sales pitch – quality of the olive oil that they sell, regardless of where it is ‘packed’. And they then need to accurately represent this to consumers.