Italy’s Love Affair with Olive Oil
Drizzled or glugged, olive oil is a gift to the home cook – and one of Italy’s quintessential excellences. The ripe, silken qualities of the liquid gold – for that’s how ancient civilizations thought about it – are too many to count, as are the ways it has seeped into the Bel Paese’s culinary history. From robust Tuscan soups to tangy spaghetti, biscotti to salads, or just simply mopped with really good bread, olive oil is omnipresent in the Italian kitchen and across our tables, enriching our foods, enhancing our flavours, and elevating the fundamentals of cucina povera.
To live a life without olive oil (best if extra-virgin, of course) is unfathomable to any Italian worth their citizenship. We’ll take it even further: Olive groves are essential to Mediterranean culture just as vineyards are. That’s right. If you asked us to pick between oil and wine, you’d force us into an impossible choice: both are intangible parts of our identities.
Yet olive oil is still far from achieving the same status, importance, respect and curiosity that wine arouses today.
But we’re here to change that. Here’s all you need to know about this precious ingredient. And when you’re ready to try it, order some of the very best from us.
A National Treasure
From the rolling hills of Tuscany to the sunny coast of Calabria, olive oil has been an integral part of Italian life for thousands of years.
Olive trees have in fact been cultivated in the country for over four millennia and are an iconic symbol of our landscape. Fertile slopes combed with olive groves are a sight to behold in Puglia just as much as Umbria, Sicily or Abruzzo, though the final product you’ll taste in each region is different.
That, of course, is because the production of olive oil in Italy is a time-honoured tradition that is steeped in both culture and history. The process of harvesting and pressing olives has remained largely unchanged for centuries (though there have been modernisations, too!), with many families still using traditional methods passed down from generation to generation, resulting in distinctive oils that eschew simple categorizations.
Depending on where it’s made, Italian olive oil can be luminous green or canary yellow, golden or even brown. The Umbrian kind has a beautifully low acidity, and distinctive fruity notes with a delicious peppery aftertaste that lingers on the tongue. Calabrian ranges from herbaceous green to bright golden yellow; and can be spicy, floral, fruity or buttery – though it will always have a “clean” and “fresh” taste on the palate. In Lazio, the liquid nectar comes in an intense green hue and spicy-fruity taste with a hint of artichokes. Tuscany, considered by many the queen of olive oil, is known for its rich, fruity flavour, which you’ll find in traditional Tuscan dishes such as bruschetta and panzanella. The list could go on.
Just like wine, olive oil is a world unto itself, and a testament to Italy’s multiplicity when it comes to food.
The Art of Olive Oil-Making
Whether you’re in Le Marche, Sardinia or Campania, you’ll find different methods of making olive oil across the boot-shaped country.
Cold pressing is the most traditional one, and is still used today in many regions of Italy. It involves mechanically pressing the olives to extract the oil without the use of heat or chemicals, which results in a high-quality oil with a fresh, fruity flavour and high levels of antioxidants (always a plus). Centrifugation is another process, slightly more modern, which uses a spinning process to separate the oil from the other components of the olive. This is faster and more efficient than cold pressing, but it can result in a lower quality oil with a less intense flavour.
Solvent extraction is also an option, although as it uses chemicals to extract the oil from the olives, is the least traditional and results in an oil with a milder flavour and lower quality (Italians, as you might have guessed, aren’t fans of this method).
Blending – i.e. mixing oil from cold-pressed olives being blended with oil from centrifuged ones – produces a well-balanced oil with a good flavour, while organic production makes oil from olives that are grown without the use of synthetic fertilisers or pesticides and processes it using traditional methods. Lastly, there’s single estate olive oil, produced from olives grown on a single estate and processed on-site, which results in a high-quality oil with a unique flavour that reflects the terroir of the estate it’s been made on.
Each of these methods has its own unique qualities and characteristics, and the best way to determine which one is right for you is to try a variety of oils and find the one that best fits your taste.
Choosing the Perfect Olive Oil:
A Guide for Foodies
Any serious Italian home cook will tell you that nice olive oil is their biggest – and not in the least begrudged – kitchen expense. That’s because, from our nonnas to our award-winning chefs, everybody agrees that it’s the one ingredient that can massively upgrade your dinner. How to choose the right one, you ask?
- Check the origin: The first step in choosing a good olive oil is to look at where it comes from. We might be biased, but picking an olive oil from Italy is always a safe bet, as you’ll get something rich in flavour and with high levels of antioxidants, regardless of the region it’s made in.
- Read the label. Even if it’s written in Italian, look for the harvest and “use by” dates. The freshness of olive oil is important, as the oil can become rancid over time, so you want to purchase a bottle with a recent harvest date, as this will ensure that you are getting the freshest and most flavourful oil. The finest producers always put that out proudly on their olive oil, so watch out for it!
- Know your type. There are several types of olive oil, including extra virgin, virgin, and pure. Extra virgin olive oil is the highest quality, made from the first cold pressing of the olives and free from any chemical treatment. Virgin olive oil is made from the second pressing and may contain some impurities, while pure olive oil is a blend of virgin and refined oils and is typically used for cooking. When choosing an olive oil, look for one that is labelled as extra virgin.
- Set age aside. Unlike wine, extra-virgin olive oil does not improve with age. Fresher is better, and right out of the mill sublime – not to mention full of healthful polyphenols.
- Test it out. The best way to determine if an olive oil is of high quality is to taste it. Take a small sip of the oil and let it sit in your mouth for a few seconds or, if you’re like us, cut a nice slice of crusty bread and dip it in the liquid gold. Look for a smooth, well-balanced flavour with no bitter or rancid notes.
