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Thoughts After Dark answers the questions you have in those final moments before you fall asleep when a simple Google search turns into an hour-long exploration of how things are made and how they work. Your random late night questions are answered here – even the ones you didn’t know you had.
When Graza’s new olive oil hit the e-commerce shelves, I immediately placed an order. Not because of the rave reviews, but because I could imagine it would fit nicely on my kitchen counter next to my cookbooks. Basically, it was pretty to watch.
According to the company, what makes Graza different is that it is a squeezable olive oil. Imagine the ketchup and mustard bottles placed on every table in a local restaurant – this is the type of container that olive oil goes into. Their slogan? “This olive oil is special, but it shouldn’t be.”
This got me thinking about olive oil production and whether expensive olive oil is really that much better than “cheap” oil. Is it about making a bottle that looks good on a shelf instead of tucked away in a cabinet, or can you really feel the difference?
Immerse yourself in the history of olive oil
While olive oil can be used as a final topping on anything from pizza to ice cream, most people use olive oil for cooking or as a dip for bread. But it’s not just food either.
In the Mediterranean region, olive oil is also a medicine and, historically, a symbol of wealth and power. Homer actually called it “liquid gold.” Throughout history, olive oil has been used for religious rituals, as fuel for lamps, soap making, etc.
The olive tree belongs to the Oleceae family, which is also home to lilacs and jasmine, and is known as the oldest cultivated tree in the world. Although the origin of the olive is unclear, it is assumed that it was first found in Syria or sub-Saharan Africa.
Olives have been cultivated for over 6,000 years and olive oil production is estimated to date back to 4,000 BC. In Crete in 3000 BC, olive oil was a highly sought after commodity. Eventually, as olive oil production spread throughout Spain and the Roman Empire, the olive oil trade increased.
In America, olive oil was introduced in the 16th century AD and Southern California was home to the first olive trees due to its optimal climate. From 2020 to 2021, 2.9 million metric tons of olive oil were produced worldwide. This number is expected to increase by 12% by 2022.
Before moving on to olive oil production, let’s go back to my first point that may have made you cringe – I know I did when I discovered the pair – olive oil. olive and ice cream. Yes it is a thing and you can get a cone topped with oil instead of chocolate at a few places in New York.
First came the olive, then came the oil
Although it may be called liquid gold, it is actually quite green sometimes. This is because the color depends on the maturity of the crop.
In the early years of olive oil production, over 2,000 years ago, olive oil was made using stone mills to crush fresh olives into a kind of paste. . This was to separate the oil, pits and other pieces from the fruit.
To better understand how olive oil is made today, we must first talk about the different types of olive oil and their differences.
Extra virgin olive oil: It is the highest quality of olive oil because it is the least processed form, which means it retains its natural vitamins and minerals. This oil works best on salads.
Virgin olive oil: This oil is similar to extra virgin olive oil, but of slightly lower quality as the flavor may not be perfect (more on that later). This oil works best for cooking and frying.
Refined olive oil: These oils are often simply labeled “olive oil” or “pure olive oil”. Refined olive oil is made by processing virgin olive oils without changing the glyceride structure. This oil is quite bland and often mixed with other more pungent oils.
How olive oil is made
Pick the olives
Although it probably comes as no surprise, the first step in olive oil production is actually picking the olives and cleaning them. Olives for extra virgin olive oils are picked when they are fairly green and “immature,” giving them the peppery taste often associated with olive oil.
The olives are either picked by hand using tools that shake the olives from the branches, or picked mechanically with shakers. In the future, robotic harvesters could be much more common, as they could more accurately pick perfectly ripe olives and work around the clock.
The Yamaha Motor Company, for example, focuses primarily on apple orchards with its vacuum harvesting technology that carefully removes fruit from its tree. But in the future, the technology could extend to olive harvesting.
Once the olives are loaded onto a truck, they are transported to a production facility as quickly as possible, as fruit picked more recently produces better quality olive oil.
Grind this oil
Once the olives arrive at the facility, they are washed and the oil is separated from the fruit. This requires mechanical or physical crushing and extraction – virgin olive oil cannot be extracted using extreme heat, according to regulations.
First, the olive is ground, pits and all, into a super thick paste resembling oatmeal. New milling machines use stainless steel hammers, cutters, or discs because this method produces less oxidation and better quality oil.
Next, the olive paste is placed in a stainless steel trough fitted with a corkscrew-shaped bottom mixer, also called a mixer. The mixing process takes place in a temperature-controlled room for 20 to 40 minutes. As the paste is slowly stirred, the oils are extracted. This step is particularly important because it creates the many flavors of the oil.
To finish, the olive paste is passed through a carafe. This separates the newly produced olive oil from water and solids.
Filtering and bottling the oil
After all this hard work, the oil can finally be filtered and bottled. Although racking is sometimes used, the preferred method for most growers is filtration.
The tricky part is what comes before bottling and selling the oil: all the testing. To be considered extra virgin olive oil, it must pass through chemical analysis and have a free acidity level of 0.8% or less; a purity test; and finally a sensory analysis evaluation carried out by olive oil tasting professionals. This job literally requires you to note if there are any flaws in the flavor of the oil – pretty cool.
Once tested, the defect-free oil can be bottled and sold as extra virgin oil, and other olive oils are sold as virgin-grade or refined.
Main olive oil manufacturers
Considering the history of the olive, guess who are the biggest olive oil producing countries in the world.
Yes, it is mainly the Mediterranean region, more specifically Spain, Greece, Italy and Portugal. But in 2021, California produced around 55,000 tons of olive oil. With a climate similar to the Mediterranean, California produces about 4 million gallons per year.
Cheap or Expensive Olive Oil – What’s the Deal?
It’s time to dive into the hard questions. Is Expensive Olive Oil Really Worth It?
I think it’s important to consider the Graza scenario. I bought it because it looked good and I really like the taste. I’m not an olive oil pro so I can’t say if it’s that good because the marketing worked and I want to keep it on my kitchen counter forever or because it has really good taste.
Excluding the power of marketing, olive oil can cost anywhere from $15 to hundreds of dollars, so what’s the deal? Toni Mazzaglia, founder of food tourism company Taste Florence, said price matters because “producing quality oil costs money, and so does the certification to prove it.” It’s not that different from buying wine.
The difference between an expensive olive oil and a cheaper oil is in the health benefits, as the vitamins are not lost in the production of quality olive oil. According to Spyros Dafnis, owner and producer of The Governor Olive Oil, what stands out about premium olive oil is the care taken in its production.
This means that the olives are grown organically, checked one by one to make sure no bad apples enter the batch, brought to a facility within hours of picking, and often cold pressed to preserve all the health benefits. It is very labor intensive and Dafnis said that during the harvest season they work 18 hour days for three months.
All in all, you can get good olive oil with lots of health benefits for a decent price. Just make sure it’s certified because 80% of olive oil is fake and mixed with random oils. Sometimes oils sold under a well-known name may even be fake, because there aren’t enough resources to control the hundreds of thousands of tons of oil that hit grocery store shelves. That’s why you should definitely do your research before you spend the money on a bottle of oil – if you care about that sort of thing, of course. Either way, if you like the taste, that’s what really matters. And if you feel like splurging, this link will teach you how to taste olive oil like a sommelier.
One of my favorite ways to use olive oil is to make crispy fish skin like this Enjoy your meal recipe explains. For an even easier work snack, combine cucumber, thickly sliced feta, dill, cracked pepper and a drizzle of olive oil on a plate.
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