Olive oil
I'm fond of olive oil and olives. I have a beautiful olive tree at home and I occasionally dream of making olive oil from the fruit*. Maybe this year. . .
We go through litres and litres of olive oil each year, buying three and four litre tins for general cooking and frying, mid price supermarkets bottles (such as this) for every day salads and pesto, and more expensive, single estate pressings for special occasions. I feel at home shopping for olive oil, the bottles and labels (full of geography and gustatory descriptors) remind me of wine.
I like the language attached with olive oil tasting. There are the rhyming taints - fustiness and mustiness along with the pejorative terms - muddiness, sourness, metallic and rancidity.
This bottle of Ollo 'Fresh and fruity' Extra virgin olive oil (South Australia, approx $9 per 500ml bottle), is indeed fresh and fruity. It smells of green apples, putty and green banana. It's quite smooth and not particularly pungent or bitter.
* I think I'll try making a washed oil. Crush the fruit, add water and remove the oil that floats to the surface. . .
4 comments:
I've tried the "mild and mellow" offering by Ollo, and it was pretty good. With Ollo, I think you see Australian marketing at its best. There are few olive oils on the American market right now that specifically tell consumers what taste profile to expect. There's a little bit of hand-holding, but that's what the average American needs to discover the wide range of olive oils that continue to come to the U.S. market. They're just making it a little more accessible to consumers.
My bottle of Ollo came with a tag on it that said: "If you like our [Australia's] wine, then you will LOVE our olive oil." I thought it was interesting to see this reference to that country's successful wine industry, which brought us the highly accessible (and cheap!) Yellowtail. :-)
Edward,
I must admit I've yet to try (or even come across) any Australian olive oil. Is it common there, as in Tuscany and Provence for instance, for wine estates to cultivate olives and produce their own oils?
David and Costas,
Thanks for the comments. The Ollo oil is made by the Mitolo family. I assume they are the same family behind Mitolo, the well regarded winery.
It does seem to be a growing trend, with every wine producing region also producing olive oil. The climate suits both crops, plus the Australian taxation system (used to) openly encourage a variety of agricultural schemes as a legitimate way of reducing tax.
It would be interesting to think that Aussie olive oil could compete on a world stage, but I think the cache associated with Italy would be hard to overcome.
Some people would be suprised to know that some Italian labelled/branded oils already contain olive oil from Australia. Italy is fast becoming a large buyer of bulk Australian olive oil, it is blended and packaged in Italy and sold as italian oil, much like the way italy buys oil from Greece and Spain.
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