Hi, I’m Gina Kim and in the kitchen today we have Alexandra Kicenik Devarenne who is an olive oil consultant, and is on the advisory board of the new U.C. Davis Olive Center. And Alexandra is going to taste us how to properly taste olive oil and before we start, why are these glasses blue?
Alexandra: The glasses are blue so that you can’t see what color the olive oil is. A lot of the things we do when we taste olive oil, so that you don’t have any preconceived ideas and if it was a bright green oil, you would expect it to taste bitter and pungent, it might not. (Ok.) So the first thing we’re going to do is warm it up. Olive oil has to be warm when you taste it. Unlike wine which is really easy to get the aromas out of the wine because it’s very volatile. Olive oil you’ve got to work pretty hard. So you’re going to warm it up and you cover it so that you collect all of those aromas in the head space, then we’re going to take a sniff, and then you take a sip. And then this is the weird part. You’re going to slurp air through the oils in your mouth. Again trying to get as many as the aromas out as possible and close your mouth and breathe out to your nose.
You get a different set of flavors from the back of your mouth (Ah, there’s a spiciness back there.) That’s right. You get the pungency. Olive oil has three positive characteristics and one of them, you have to swallow the oil in order to detect it and that is pungency. It’s the peppery-ness. You get a little burn at the back of your throat. This oil has a slight pungency on the finish. It’s a pretty mild oil. So this oil is a blend of Arbequina, Koroneiki and Arbosana. And it comes from the largest producer in California which is California Olive Ranch.
So the palate cleanser after you taste olive oil, you want to take a sip of water. (Ok.) And the other thing is green apple slices. Bread doesn’t really help to clear the flavor of olive oil. You’re better off with something that’s a little acidic like apple.
Our second oil is an oil that you picked up at the supermarket?
Gina: I bought it yesterday off the store shelf. It was a general pretty common brand I think so…
Alexandra: Ok, and this oil is called extra virgin. Correct?
Gina: It is. I’m not sure I know what an extra virgin, what makes an extra virgin olive oil extra virgin?
Alexandra: Well extra virgin actually is a legal term of the International Olive Council has a legal definition. It is an olive oil that has been produced mechanically and with no high heat and it, most importantly, can have no defects. (So it’s the best one to get?) Ah, yes. Extra virgin, real extra virgin is the premium, the top-grade of olive oil. But a lot of the steps that you see on the shelf may not really be extra virgin. So that gets into some labeling issues and some legal issues.
Gina: You went straight for your water.
Alexandra: I have to say this is fairly typical of a supermarket olive oil. It would not be able to be sold in Europe as extra virgin. This olive oil has a very common defect in it. A very common defect of olive oil called fustiness that comes from fruit that’s allowed to sit around too long before it was pressed.
Making olive oil is really a simple process. You take an olive off the tree and the idea is to get the oil out without messing it up. (Ok.) So you pick the olives, you rush them to the mill, you wash them, crush them, and then the paste, the olive paste is stirred in a process called malaxation which helps to start the separation process and then you separate the solids, you know the pulp, and the water in the fruit from the oil, and then you’re done. It’s really, it’s a very, very simple process, and if you do it all right, you will have an extra virgin olive oil when you’re finished.
Gina: So we’re going to try our third olive oil here. We’ve got McEvoy from Petaluma, California which is your hometown. (It is.) So let’s try this one out.
Alexandra: Ok. McEvoy is one of the most important early producers of the California raisers of olive oil. They’ve been in production as long as anyone in this new wave of olive oil.
This one gives you a lot more of that peppery finish. (Right.) Right, you feel that. (Right in the back of the throat.) Right in the back of the throat. It also has more pronounced bitterness than the last one but balance is beautiful. It has lots of fruitiness as well as this hint of bitterness and then the pungency on the finish.
Gina: It’s funny because I felt like with the second one which is the supermarket brand, it tastes a lot more like oil and this one kind of tastes more like fruit. Does that…
Alexandra: That’s because what you’re tasting in an olive oil like this is fresh olives. They are milled within hours of being harvested. The olives in this oil could have sat around for days (And you can taste that?) and you can taste that.
Gina: Thank you so much Alexandra for being with us here today. And happy olive oil tasting.
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