Olive Oil Passion

Mama Mia! (Intro to Italian Olive Oil)

You’ll never believe this, but I discovered something funny when my best friend and I went to Italy on vacation. Italians really do say, “Mama Mia!”

The first time I heard Pasqua, our guide, say this I thought perhaps she was doing it because we crass Americans expected Italians to do so. But then I heard people in the street say it so I guess it’s a case of a cliché being a cliché because it’s true.

Pasqua took us to a little village in Umbria. Excitedly, she told us we were going to have the privilege of tasting several different olive oils.

Huh?
All of us crass Americans looked at each other as if to say, “What the–?”

Olive oil wasn’t exactly what we had in mind when she’d told us we were going to a tasting. We all had thoughts of Italian wines dancing in our heads. I wanted something like the fabulous Chianti we’d had the night before. That wine was bottled in the local region with only enough for the region, no exports at all, and, let me tell you, it was fabulous.

We trooped off the bus, mourning the wine we would not be tasting, trudged across the requisite piazza, and into a gift shop that specialized in, what else? Olive oil.

Now, don’t misunderstand. I like olive oil. I consider myself an aficionado. Some might say I’m an EVOO evangelist considering all the people I’ve converted to extra virgin olive oil, but, then, I just didn’t get this oil tasting thing. My best friend told me to shush and try it.

What can I say? Best friends are worse than mothers sometimes.

There was a counter with little glasses lined up in front of bottles. I walked up and pointed to a bottle that held a grass green oil. A woman poured me a shot. Timidly I lifted it, sniffed, and down the hatch. I tried four in a row. By the fifth one, I needed a good shot of wine to clear my palette. That’s when my best friend came over and told me I was doing it wrong. I was supposed to treat it like a wine tasting. (Apparently, I could have looked like a connoisseur if I had just talked to Lucia before I went on my trip. She recently learned how to taste olive oil from one of her friends.)

Before I could redeem myself, a man began telling us what we’d been tasting. He called olive oil liquid gold and said Italians produced the best. Having toured his wonderful country, I’ll allow him to make sweeping statements of national pride.

I wish now I had paid more attention. I don’t like feeling like a slacker chick. So like most slackers, I went to the Internet. Thank goodness for Google.

Famous Italian olive oils. Hmmm. Italy produces about a third of the world’s olive oil, and the oils are considered especially flavorful. Every region in Italy produces except two. So I don’t want to make some dumb statement about oils from Piedmont and Val D’Aosta.

There are thousands of cultivars, that means variety of tree. The main ones in Italy are Leccino, Frantoio, and Carolea.

Getsemani Grand Cru is called Grand Cru because it’s guaranteed to be produced from a single variety of olive grown in a specific geographic region. It’s called Getsemani because of the original olive tree in the Garden of Gethsemane from which it descends.

Frantoio is the Tuscan olive oil with a fragrant, one might say even say, perfumed character. The prized oils from Tuscany and Umbria are processed the old way by mashing rather than in a centrifuge like many modern producers now use.

I’ve got to say I think Tuscany and Umbria are prizes in themselves. The olive trees terraced on steep hillsides and up mountain slopes create a silvery green contrast to the golden fields of wheat and the darker green of trellised grapes.

Let’s see there’s Antica Italia, La Piana, Alimentitalia. Some of these names are real tongue twisters if you don’t speak Italian. Oh, and Biancolilla is from Sicily. Wow. There’s so many. Wish I could tell Pasqua how impressed I am now with Italian Olive Oils.

My grandmother always says the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. She’s always saying that.

Maybe with the perfect Italian olive oil, I could test her theory. Purely for scientific purposes of course.

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