Weekend links and pics

As per title, some news about studies on olive oil, a wonderful blog to dig in (google translate may be your friend if you don't speak italian), and some fresh pics from our orchards (not olive connected but I like 'em!)

Wish you a good weekend!

ONAOO oil tasting crash course

In addition to being host to our pruning course, ONAOO kindly saved the last day, otherwise lost to the rain, by organizing a quick olive oil tasting for us.

That's how it started...

We got on Skype the ONAOO panel leader, Mr.Scoccia, to guide us through a swift voyage around the world in about fifteen monovarietal oils: from Sicily to Umbria, passing by Australia, Chile and the southern coasts of the Mediterranean.

And here's how it ended!

We tasted so many different characters, even between the same variety (coming from two different continents though). One of the biggest surprises (for me at least) was tasting a monocultivar oil made of picual for the first time - that was a Proust moment! As the madeleine for the caracter of In search of the lost time, the picual brought back to my memories all that flat supermarket oils of days gone by (for me at least)...

Looking forward, getting a grip on tasting and blending is the next big step needed to elevate our products a step further, and I am quite certain about where a fair bit of knowledge lies. Imperia, see you soon!

Olive pruning in Liguria - part two

Having dealt with the introductions in the previous post, I'll pass to the actual course experience.

Look, it tells you where to cut!

Really?

 Actually, I need to do some explanation first:

Another gold for Cadenela!

Amongst other competitions, we submitted a sample of our cuvee' at this year's 19th Olive oil fair in Vodnjan / Dignano.  After several golds won on other expositions, we bagged again one of the best results. If you'd like to see the results of the chemical analysis and of the panel test, do click on the image below!

Olive pruning in Liguria - an overview

After quite some absence from posting (the reader will see why in the coming days), here I start with an initial report from a great experience made possible by the O.N.A.O.O. ( the italian national organization of olive oil tasters, link here).
 

The O.N.A.O.O. offices in Imperia (well, not all of the building...)

 Actually, it was not about olive oil tasting, but rather about