QUALITY FIRST AND FOREMOST
Posted on February 07 2024
What do you think is its main quality?
Olive oil is really excellent for your health. One of my best customers is an American sports coach who supplies my oil to his trainees as part of their diet, on the pretext that American oils are cut and therefore deprived of their nutritional qualities. According to him, 80% of weight loss is due to diet, and only 20% to exercise.
Your olive oil is extra virgin, and it's precisely this quality of oil that the Italian diet insists on. Can you tell us more about it and explain the different stages involved in producing your oil?
Extra virgin olive oil is obtained from the first cold pressing. Occasionally, oils are collected after a 2nd or even 3rd extraction, but in this case, they lose all their properties and are of much lower quality. Once this first cold-pressing process has been completed, we obtain what is known as olio nuovo. To obtain extra virgin olive oil, it must then be filtered. I have chosen a natural cold filtering process, which means that I place the olio nuovo in stainless steel vats and leave it to rest during the winter in my cantina. With the cold, the oil hardens and naturally brings up what needs to be filtered. By doing this, I avoid the need to run the oil through the machine, so it's less "stressed". You can really taste it. With this process, however, it's not ready for consumption until March.
You mention olio nuovo. There's a lot of talk about it these days, why do you think that is?
I think it's mainly a trend because, in my opinion, this product is a bit overrated. Olio nuovo is extra virgin olive oil before filtration (hence its cloudiness). It's very strong in flavor and is interesting to test on a simple piece of bread, but for daily consumption, it's of no interest. It's a living product that doesn't keep very long, whereas well-filtered olive oil can keep for years. Don't be fooled by expiration dates: one of our producer friends still has olive oil from 2004 that he uses for personal consumption! Over time, the slightly spicy character of Tuscan oil softens, but nothing more.
Alexandre Vazart
By Emilie Nahon for alidifirenze.fr
