Casa Rosales

Casa Rosales

Tuesday 24 January 2012

Extra Virgin or...........?

Pure or not quite so pure.  You can't tell just by looking. Looks can be deceptive and you may already have preconceived ideas that could lead you into erroneous judgement.

You've got to get close and sniff. A good deep inhalation. Do you get green? Do you get grassy? Maybe even something a little fruity? That's a good sign.

Take a sip...yes, a sip...can't face that, eh? I understand, though to really do it properly, you do have to swig, swill and swallow. No? OK, then, take a chunk of plain white bread - no tasty, wholewheat stuff - just plain white bread. Dip it, really soak it. And taste it.

What do you get? If it's anything between a tickle and a coughing fit, we could be onto a winner. Peppery, spicy, something with a bit of a kick like a chilli? Oh, yes - this is good, this is good.

Olive oil tasting is as much of an art as wine tasting. And flavours can differ almost as widely. A key difference, that I hadn't realised until I came to live in an olive-growing area, is that unlike grapes, olives don't come in different colours - black olives are green olives that have ripened. I had always assumed that, like grapes, the colour of the olive was a difference of type, not age. There are different types of olive - grown in different parts of the world but all will start off a greeny colour and will ripen to a blacky colour.

And the greener the oil, if it's a good quality extra-virgin olive oil, then the stronger the likelihood that the olives were picked early in the harvesting season - sometime between October and November - definitely before Christmas. It is this oil that produces a greeny, grassy/fruity-scented, peppery oil that is unlike much of what is for sale in supermarkets.




OK, I'm no expert.

However, I am learning! And this is thanks to the wonderful Antonio - who knows everything and everybody around here (and loves to learn English) - a local olive oil producer was recently introduced to us. He has an olive oil conference coming up and needs an interpreter as delegates are coming from as far away as Australia, Japan and South Africa. He came to see us at the weekend, bringing with him three large bottles of his oil, and FR is most happy to take the on the job. He loves anything to do with olives - from the beautiful wood to the stones that are burned in latest heating devices - and is at this moment having a tour of the olive oil factory with the producer, very happy about this turn of events.

We did a proper tasting of the three oils and were amazed at just how very different each of them was - so much so that we went on to try, in a similar way, all the oils we had in our house. Like wine, they all have a their own distinct taste and flavour.

The olive picking season this year has been early as the weather has been good all over the Christmas season - there has hardly been a day when the tractors, land rovers and trucks haven't been out in the fields along with a majority of the inhabitants of the town. Let's hope this means a good year for olive oil.

We have had many different tractors parked around out house in recent months but I was really rather taken with this one...I've become a tractor-fancier! I'm just so sorry I didn't get a photo of one I saw a couple of weeks ago - it was a Lamborghini and it was gorgeous.




So - watch out for more olive oil tips on this blog - how to tell virgin from extra-virgin (it's the acidity level that decides it), how to store it, use and of course, a bit of a plug for 'our' olive oil region and maybe a bit of competition bashing. The Spanish are rather green on the marketing front, unlike the Italians, who think they invented olive oil - ha!. As you may guess, the Italian stuff is mostly adulterated and violated and impure! Probably....


15 comments:

  1. Hello Annie:
    Well, we have found all of this extremely fascinating and should love to learn more. We have to say that our favourite Olive Oil up until now has been Greek, but we are prepared to be persuaded otherwise.

    As for tractor fancying.....is this a treatable condition?!!!

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  2. Lamborghini make tractors?!

    Thank you for lesson the first in all things olive oil. Like the Hattats I am looking forward to learning more :D

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  3. Looking forward to more olive oil lessons - I love to dunk bread in oil - it is a favourite pre dinner snack. How lovely to be able to get oil that you can see move from tree to bottle.

    Tractors???

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  4. We managed to get 7 litres of superb olive oil in November. Plus about 20 kilos of olives which we've preserved..although those have now gone up to Ankara to the in*laws. We have a pressing factory on the edge of our village and this is the first time we've used it. I was so excited at the results. Thanks for this post..very enlightening.

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  5. Fascinating post, Annie. I love olives and olive oil, including the "dunking bread in it as a snack" bit and never buy anything other than extra-virgin if I can help it. I would really enjoy being able to try different kinds to see if I too can spot the difference.

    I do hope FR enjoys the interpreting job.

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  6. Fascinating Annie! (Now bring on the chocolate post - :O)))))))))!)

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  7. Interesting post Annie. I never knew that about green and black olives ... I'm the only one who likes them at all in this house (and I love them).

    Liking the re-vamp of the blog's look by the way!

    Andy
    X

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  8. Dear Jane and Lance,
    Thank you for your generous words. I have to agree with you on the Greek stuff - if not the oil of Greece, then certainly the olives of the kalamata type - which cannot be beaten. I'm developing a taste for the local oil though, which feels like a good thing to do.
    As for the tractors...
    Axx

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  9. Annie - Lamborghini don't just MAKE tractors, they make beautiful ones! I'm hunting one down to photograph. Axxx

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  10. Karen I loved your comment about seeing the olives move from tree to bottle! It's perfect - thank you. Ax

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  11. Hi Ayak - we haven't don't have our own olives (yet) but I can imagine the pleasure of getting one's own olives pressed locally - how lovely. We can compare flavour notes! Axx

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  12. Hello Perpetua - glad to hear you like to dunk in the proper stuff! (Your own bread, I presume, for the very best effect.)
    FR is being taken on an olive oil tasting course, so I will glean more useful (?) information very soon. It's really quite exciting. Axxx

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  13. MPM - I must try and think about whether chocolate could work with olives...watch out for the stripes, the secret will come as soon as I have a mo!
    Axxx

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  14. Hi Andy! Nice to hear from you - I intend to swot up a bit on olives so there may well be more on the subject! And tractors too. The revamp was a bit of an accident and I will be working on that too in the coming weeks...:-)
    Axxx

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  15. The next time I go shopping at the Fairway (it's a mega gourmet superstore nearby), I will take a picture of their olive oil bar and post it on my blog. They feature some from Spain, too.

    I go there and try different olive oils. They let you dip bits of bread to sample. Mmmmm. Now my mouth is watering.

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