Olive Oil

Freshness Comes First

Mahmoud Yahyaoui

ALMOST NO OLIVE OIL USED TO be like the kind we love now. The harvest took place mostly in January and February. By then the olives were black and soft, easier to press with primeval wooden equipment, and the color of the oil was golden. Even with the advent of hydraulic presses, the mats holding the olive paste required an effort to keep clean. Fats readily absorb aromas, and without cleanliness the oil was affected.

Today, olives are harvested in October and November when they’re green or turning violet, and the fruit is pressed within hours. The oil that pours from the centrifugal separator is a vibrant green. That kind of oil became dominant only in the 1980s, which is when it first became widely popular to pour the raw oil on food as a condiment. Olive oil from the cool Chianti hills set a standard for aroma, pungency, and bitterness, and the Tuscan varieties — Correggiolo, Frantoio, Leccino, and Moraiolo — have been widely planted. (Italy is the number one consumer of extra virgin olive oil.) Any grower and mill now has the knowledge needed to produce extra virgin, barring exceptional problems with insects, disease, or weather. Mere “virgin” oil has almost disappeared.

Increasingly, olives are planted as bushes in tight rows, so they can be pruned, sprayed, and harvested by machine. Only certain varieties lend themselves, ones that are low-vigor, upright, productive, with fruit that’s easy to shake free. The oil of those varieties, such as Arbequina, Arbosana, and Lecciana (a cross of Arbosana with Leccino aimed at bush production) also happens to be sweeter, or at least less peppery and bitter. But it seems impossible that the oil can be as fine as the oil from centuries-old trees.

I’ve been thinking about and using a lot of olive oil during summer weeks of eating just-picked vegetables, with more still to come. The oil’s sweetness and flavors complement vegetables so well. The most important job of good olive oil is to taste fresh. Least often mentioned is that because extra virgin olive oil is unrefined, it has a delicious melting texture. It can be anywhere from thin to viscous, but it disappears on your tongue like butter, in contrast to the greasiness of refined oil. Of course there’s flavor, too, often wonderful, vivid in new oil. With those qualities come pepperiness and bitterness, which are also good, although too much bitterness is challenging and strong pepper can catch and burn in the back of your throat. Crucially, the pepper and bitterness protect the oil from oxidation — rancidity.

Because the bitterness of new oil hides some of the fruit and other flavors, Italian producers often taste new oil in the form of the most basic bruschetta: just oil on well-toasted bread, often without garlic. The toasting covers some of the bitterness. During the course of the year, the pepper and bitterness diminish, and along with the fresh flavors, they disappear when olive oil is cooked. Then the flavor advantage to extra virgin is subtle.

Professionals taste olive oil more formally by sucking it forcefully from a spoon, so it mixes with air and sprays across the tongue. The taste is a complex subject, and some years (some vintages) excel beyond others. Top oil, above all Tuscan, to me has a flavor that suggests cherries and vanilla, but you may find (to cite the list in the International Olive Oil Council’s “Method for the Organoleptic Assessment of Extra Virgin Olive Oil Applying to Use a Designation of Origin”): fresh almond, apple, raw artichoke, chamomile, citrus, eucalyptus, exotic fruit, fig leaf, flowers, new-mown grass, green peppercorn, green unripe fruit, herbs, olive leaf, pear, pine nut, berries, bell pepper, tomato, vanilla, and walnut.

In contrast, rancid olive oil tastes of what’s usually described as cardboard, wax crayons, or old nuts. I find, however, that the rancid flavor is much closer to painter’s linseed oil — but how many people are familiar with that? The North American Olive Oil Association says, “Pour some fresh olive oil into a cup and leave it out in your kitchen near the stove or windowsill (in other words, expose it to heat, light and air). Every day, sniff and taste the oil. You will eventually learn what rancid olive oil tastes like and how to avoid it in the future!”

What’s labeled as plain “olive oil” is refined. Its rancidity and off-flavors have been removed, leaving it neutral, and a little good oil has been added to give flavor.

The key standard for extra virgin olive oil is that it contains no more than 0.8 percent free acidity. The California Olive Oil Council, whose seal appears on some bottles, is still more rigorous, allowing no more than 0.5 percent free acidity. In fact, much of the best oil from individual producers contains less than 0.2 percent. “Free acidity,” however, is a tough concept to market, and it’s often reduced to “acidity,” which doesn’t help at all because rancid oil doesn’t have an acid taste.

The more complete explanation is that the fats in olive oil are fatty acids, and free acidity means free fatty acids — rancid fats. The free acidity is measured before bottling, naturally, but what happened after that? Olive oil is vulnerable to heat, light, air, and time. Even an unopened bottle under ideal conditions changes during the year. And after a bottle is opened, the older the oil is, the faster it loses good qualities. It matters hugely whether your bottle was opened yesterday or three months ago. I’ve noticed a difference in just two weeks, and I try to use the oil by then, although it almost always takes longer.

Rather than call for “extra virgin” olive oil in a recipe, I say “excellent, fresh-tasting olive oil” because it’s the taste that counts. How long ago was the harvest? How was the bottle treated after that? How long has it been open? “Excellent” olive oil will always be extra virgin, and “fresh-tasting” oil, of course, tastes fresh.

There’s a lot to be said about the differences in the taste of oil from different terroirs and varieties. Some broad influences are that olive trees growing in soil with more limestone give oil with more pungency and bitterness, heavier soil gives more body, and sandy soil and more plentiful water make lighter oil. In each traditional growing area, the taste of the local oil is an essential characteristic of the food of that place.

Top olive oil in North America is expensive, mostly imported, and many cooks use a lower-priced extra virgin oil for most of their cooking and a more special one for salad or adding after cooking. For general use, I’ve often bought California Olive Ranch’s 100-percent California oil, which comes from bush production. (The brand’s oil international blends, when I’ve tried them, had the old-fashioned taste.)

Beyond using a lighter oil with lighter food and a stronger one with stronger food, you can get picky about the oil you choose for a particular purpose. But unless you consume at a very rapid rate, it’s not a good idea to keep more than two or possibly three bottles open at once. (There’s an advantage to smaller bottles.)

When you buy olive oil, a greener color suggests freshness and an early harvest (although leaves mixed with the olives may have contributed), and anyway you can’t see the color through dark bottles that protect against ultraviolet light. A little just-pressed oil is flown immediately to faraway places, but in North America most arrives by ship and not until April. The best olive oil comes from individual producers, and the more direct the source, the better. Two importers whose oil I’ve used are the Rare Wine Co., which specializes in outstanding Tuscan oil in season, and the discriminating Gustiamo, which offers oil from about half a dozen Italian regions. Not to neglect oil from Spain, Greece, France, and other countries, but I don’t have experience ordering from a particular source.

After I learned to recognize the taste of fresh olive oil, good oil became so indispensable that I thought I’d rather give up wine than olive oil. (That was a long time ago; the thought didn’t last.) There are certainly other wonderful fats, including other unrefined oils — walnut, hazelnut, pumpkin-seed, sesame — but olive oil stands out for being widely flattering, particularly to vegetables. In a vinaigrette, the better the olive oil, the more you should use in proportion to vinegar. I use about five to one. ●