Our olives take one: the busa

Actually, just one of the busa varieties: the busa femmina di Dignano, or female busa. Big, rounded and meaty, this olive variety is native from our very town of Dignano.

Her tree is like the oil she produces: benign, not much wild, and somewhat delicate. Anyway, I think it may be better to leave aside the agricultural details and pass on to what you might find more interesting: her oil.

It does not exceed in bitterness, spiciness or flavors, nor does it have an electric green colour like some of its peers, but is a perfect match for any kind of delicate dishes. It does not impone itself on the tastes, but rather accompany them and enhance them in a diminutive, understated way. In few words, if you need the double bass of the olive oils, with the busa you can't go wrong!

Pedal to the metal!

I think this was the longest absence of updates on this blog since it's inception -  nature's decision to provide us with a rainy winter and a sudden start of spring, I'm talking to you...

Well, it's quite a busy period for us, having the backlog of late winter work to be cleared off the list (now done!) and all the usual spring duties compressed in half the usual time. We're keeping up, thanks for asking, and soon the tempo should be easier on us, and allow for some more regular reporting!

For those who may wonder what kept yours truly occupied, here's a little video (it's an hour of work compressed in few seconds)




To get a feel of the size of activities, just press play a few hundred times :-)

Olive fruits - the missing, the missed, and the survivors (an early overview)

It's still quite early for a proper assessment of where this year will bring us, but few weeks after the flowers left place for the olive fruits we can give you some bits and pieces about where we're standing - we'll still have to wait for the end of the summer for any conclusions!

The leccino (which gives a quite balanced, gentle oil) has been a bit of a misfirer - lots of flowers but not that generous in fruits, maybe because the pendolino (another variety that is supposed to pollinate it) almost completely forgot to blossom. Here's how a branch of leccino is looking now:

Not really crowded!

Of the other varieties, the bianchera (which in contrast to the leccino, gives a peppery, spicy oil) is handling quite well. You can see from the below picture that the branches are well populated (the tiny dots close to the leaves!):

Probably a serious discussion going on...

Some of you may remember my earlier post on pests (excuse the pun) which sits just below this one: anyway, here's the link for the lazy. It turned out the little bug is causing problems: we released our team of specialists to chech the population:

Note the special net used by the young assistant!

And we found quite a number of those insects on our trees, which prompted us to spray some repellent on the trees. Here you can see what a catch looks like:

The insects are marked in red - the others are their victims

One is never happy to see them around in numbers, as in few days they decimate the still small fruits by piercing them to feed and breed (here's a picture of a sliced olive, few millimetres in diameter):

Piercing

What happens afterwards is that the young fruit, fatally wounded, dies - too early, too young. I'd rather see their glorious end by being poured, as oil, on a steak, rather than see them fall by the beak?mouth? of a small brown insect!

Anyway, we're doing our best to bring you a fantastic oil this year too, and the path to harvest is still long ...

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 - 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

Why (and which) olive oil is good for you

The fact that olive oil (the extra vergine, not the raffinated ones!) is, except from being tasty and improving your cuisine,  a fantastic source of healthy substances is quite known - what is not quite so known is that different varieties (cultivars) vastly vary in their properties.

Different shapes, different taste, but also different inherent qualities!

 I had the pleasure of attending recently to a lecture about such variances which is now available on the web (for the technically inclined readers, the link is at the bottom of this post). I'll try to sum up the study which I think highlights a number of facts the consumer should be aware of.

For starters, some of the most important healthy properties of the extra vergine are:
- the high level of unsaturated fatty acids (which are good for you because of their effects on LDL cholesterol, in primis)
- again, the high level of alpha tocopherol, or vitamin E (antioxidant par excellence)
- polyphenols (again, antioxydants and antiinflammatories)

Now, the study takes in consideration four diffent cultivars: one introduced (the Leccino), and three autochtonous cultivars (Buza, Bianchera and Rossignola). Why exactly those varieties? The Leccino because of its popularity as a variety, whilst the three locals are also well spread in the region amongst producers. The Leccino and the Buza give gentler oils (say a chardonnay), whilst the Bianchera and Rossignola are oils with a kick (syrah?) Oh, thanks for asking - all of them are well represented in our groves...

Now, what are the findings? Speaking of oleic acid, all the varieties had more than 75%, with a total of average 85% of unsaturated fatty acids, which is well above regulation requirements from health authorities to state the health benefits of its consumation.

And now the interesting bits: should you wish for a higher content of vitamin E, go for Leccino or Rossignola, with the Buza in a honorable and close third place. The Bianchera is well behind the first three, but still above health requirements for foods to be labelled as natural source of vitamin E.

Author: O.Koprivnjak et al, 2012

Our vitamin E winner - the Leccino!

 If polyphenols are what you are after, the Bianchera is the clear winner, with values well above the other contesters - notwithstanding this fact, all of them are again well above regulations requirements for being labelled as natural source of antioxydants. I'd like to give you a tip here: check whether the groves your olive oil comes from are irrigated, and if so there is no contest at all - the sometimes high polyphenols level in the other three varieties are almost certainly the consequence of a stressful, dry year.

Author: O.Koprivnjak et al, 2012

Kicking not only in taste, but in polyphenols too...

 So, next time you choose a single variety olive oil, you may want to think about the specific health benefits in addition to the diffent tastes they have!

Part of the data for this post was sourced from an article by O.Koprivnjak et al, "Characteristics of Nutritive Value of Virgin Olive Oils from Buža, Istarska bjelica, Leccino and Rosulja Cultivars", 2012, which can be found here.

Harvest time approaching

In between the frequent rainshowers that are passing by with the regularity of the Heathrow Express, exept for the standard checks of familiar flora&fauna inhabitantas of the orchards, a new topic is more and more becoming subject of our attention. Harvest season is approaching fast and we need to keep track of the olives starting to ripe, in order to pick the exact time for harvest*. As with probably every other thing, one should not be too quick to act or delay too much the decision to pick the olives.  The earlier cultivars (i.e., the ones that tend to ripe sooner) started to change colour. Since this year's harvest will be quite meagre, there's no chance of picking each cultivar separately and producing monocultivar olive oil - it will have to be a cuvee. Not that it's a bad thing per se, will just have to time the harvest a bit more precisely.

Here are some of the leccino fruits already starting to change colour:

 Here is another grouping of leccino cultivar, with one olive (yes, the one a bit out of focus at 7 o' clock...) just about to start its dress change:

It is a matter of days now. Will keep you updated.

*That's a specific topic altogether, an is subject of a fervent, almost religious discussion, by followers of different schools. As almost always the old latin "in medias res" is true, probably there's a middle way in this topic too. Will elaborate in detail soon.

Book review: Monocultivar olive oil by Mr.Celletti

Should you wish to read a brief, well written, sharp and in many places ironic if not caustic overview of beliefs and misbeliefs, as well as more than some myths and truths about olives and olive oil, this is the book for you. I read it in italian, but Mr.Celletti had the book translated and is now available in english too.

Steering well clear from technicalities and deep dwellings about specific issues,

Planting started!

It was a quite demanding weekend, with the test planting taking place on Saturday (we still need to tweak a bit the operations to make them the most time-effective as possible). We had to basically

a) coordinate the Cat digging the right size holes (not too big, not too small) at the right place (downwind from the most stressful wind for the young olives, behind the supporting pole)

b) coordinate the people placing and tieing up the olive to the pole, covering the hole, placing the white textile on the trunk (it's a trap for non-winged bugs)

c) and water them

Since we worked the whole day I did not manage to take a lot of pictures, but basically here are the two rows we planted by noon (about 100 plants):

Of course, we still need to work a bit on the terrain, but there was no rain at all this winter so the ground is hard as rock!

Just FYI, the cultivar planted here is called Rossignola, tipical for this region (but I promise I'll develop on cultivars planted and on the different olive oil they produce later on!)

But it did not end there. We still have about two thousand plants waiting at home, and they have their needs too! So in the evening it was watering time -  I guess the olives were grateful