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

Olive oil news roundup

Some news are good or bad, depending on how you look at them.

Tom Mueller, journalist and writer (you can check our review of his book here) reports on a mislabeling issue in the US. Have a look at the article here. I'm constantly amazed (both as a producer and a consumer) by the number of products that can hit the shelves and be something else completely. It is encouraging however that there are a number of parties working on consumer awareness, and others trying to make your meals safer. Do keep your eyes open though, and try to educate youreselves on what you are buying. There is no better safeguard from fraudolent food than knowledge.

Another article, this time in the Olive Oil Times here, speaks about a lot of olive oil being detained due to presence of an insecticide not being allowed in the US for use on olives. It may be bad news for EU producers, but it points at two things - first, some traces of insectide may remain within the olive oil that you use even if it is "allowed" to be there by the authorities and be "deemed" "acceptable". You can draw your own conclusions on this.

Second, a proper organic olive oil will not have any insecticide within, and for sure none in the ground, water and air where the olives grow. It will for sure make you happier and relaxed about what you are pouring on your cheese, fish or salad if you know it comes from a place such as this:

Let the plants do your job! Jujube and olive trees

Organic farming, whilst friendly to the environment, brings quite some head scratching when thinking about how to ensure the olive gets the best conditions to grow and produce its fruits. There's quite a lot of additional work to be done if you want to avoid chemical fertilizers and insecticides, and more often than not it's quite time consuming.

One of the most feared enemies of a healthy olive, and consequently of a perfect olive oil, is the olive fruit fly (Bactrocera oleae, wikipedia article here). Google can confirm that I am not exaggerating the problem: you get more than 20 million results if you try a search for this little fly...

So what can we do to improve our chances against this small fly whilst keeping human intromission as low as possible? One of the answers is planting jujube trees around the orchard. Ok, some explanation is due: the jujube, except for producing a tasty and healthy fruit:

Of clouds and pearls

As the winter begins its retreat, more and more numerous tiny signs of the incoming spring make themselves visible around the countryside. A flower here and there, the birds' chirp becoming melodic rather than absently atonic, life in all its facets slowly waking up.

One should however not discard winter's strengths and its abrupt comebacks, as we have witnessed these days:

A dense, thick fog intermitted by rainshowers made for an, again, hardly useable period for much overdue works in the orchards. One cannot however work against nature so, walk instead of work it was.

Not all is that grey though - as I said earlier nature is slowly waking up, and early spider webs made for a beautiful rest place for the fog and its tiny water drops.