Pure, unadulterated, extra-virgin olive oil
Only Popeye could make that claim today
For between 250 and 600 euros, you can acquire an electrically operated oil press. You can also pay up to around 6,000 euros. Suitable for all sorts of oils, like coconut, rape, sesame, peanut and olive. For under 100 euros you can get one that you sit and grind yourself. Why, you might ask, would you want to buy an oil press?
You would want to buy an oil press if you use olive oil in your cookery and, before you wail in protest that oils for cookery are freely available on the open market, first consider this: virtually none of them contains what it says on the label, not if they contain the word extra-virgin.
Whilst it is fairly beyond question that a bottle of olive oil will contain oil extracted from an olive, somewhere in there, and, in a good likelihood, that qualifies as extra-virgin, what’s by now also fairly beyond question is that, despite every ingenious method propounded by oil quality associations and every government authority since the Roman Empire (including the Government of the Republic of Italy and the European Union itself), there is nothing, it would seem, that can circumvent the circumventions that the oil industry has incorporated into its business that will protect consumers from an age-old hazard of shopping: being duped. To that extent, if no other, the olive oil industry can be safely referred to as the “oil and a whole lot of gas” industry.
The Romans had an assiduous marking system for amphorae of olive oil dispatched homeward from Spain, the far-flung colony Rome had conquered for the very purpose of feeding its 50-litre-a-year-per capita habit. They didn’t just consume it inwardly; they used it to shave and some even used it to anoint a messiah – Christ means anointed one. The ancient Romans were more than cognisant of the value attached to an olive oil that is pure, flavoursome and unadulterated. Which is what people across the world still attach value to. Except that, guaranteeing that value for the money that’s tendered is a near-impossible task.
An article in The New Yorker delved into the dangers of slipping up when buying this essential cookery basic, and it would put you off going near the product ever again. Not that the oil is bad for you. But the price you pay for it flows into the hands of rogues and fraudsters. It’s a bit like happily gambling on the Las Vegas Strip.
There are olive oils available that escape the taint that is slowly enveloping the industry, and they cost – reportedly – up to 50 euros a kilo. That’s pricey; so pricey, only the few can afford it. For those who cannot afford it, the options remain to buy a cheaper type of oil – sunflower or peanut – and avoid olives altogether, or to buy your own olive oil press and get to work producing your own, or to content yourself with an oil production industry that freely admits that it leads its consumers right up the garden path, with faux-nostalgic labels crowded with twee images of old Puglia, romantic script and actionable statements as to the nature of the bottle’s contents. You can go for a mainstream brand that vaunts its name with confidence, or for the local supermarket’s white brand: the chance is that both will be of a similar, low-grade quality. Low in grade, but within the bounds of acceptability as a consumable at all: they’re unlikely to poison you, admittedly. We’re not quite at the stage of Austrian wine with a high glycol content. But we are well within the range of being cheated every single time you pop a bottle into your supermarket trolley.
When you buy that press, do be sure to see that it can actually press olives, and whether it will press the fruit itself or only the kernels. It seems that machines differ in their claims, from having no claims at all to being sold by a number of “different” manufacturers, while in fact being exactly the same machine.
And why are there no laws against all these shenanigans? Well, there in fact are laws against these shenanigans. It’s just that there is very little enforcement, a lot of blind eyes and lots of crooked customs officers, who channel EU subsidies designed to support a supposedly ailing oiling industry into the pockets of unscrupulous importers and Turkish hazelnut oil producers, besides, of course, their own. While still “good”, 90% of oil sold in Italy as extra-virgin isn’t of premium grade, according to one producer’s estimates. It’s olive oil commixed with hazelnut or rapeseed or peanut oils. You can cook with it; just as its producers cook their books with it. Instead of consumers heightening their demands for quality product, however, we simply acquiesce in shifting the common-or-garden definition of extra-virgin onto a next-best product.
In a book on whisky, I once read that bottlers will frequently apply the word “pure” to their product. The writer questioned the practice, adding, what do they expect we’ll expect to find in the bottle? Industrial effluent? Not quite, but, in a single malt, we do expect there to be single malt whisky in the bottle, and not a cheap blend. And in a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil, what do we expect to find? Well, as long as it isn’t industrial effluent, it seems we’re happy to accept anything.
The producer interviewed by The New Yorker leaves one feeling confident that no olive oil will actually leave a bitter taste in your mouth. But he adds that any new laws to better protect the consumer will need to be designed by a criminal, because it’s the criminals who know best how to outwit the law. And that, on the contrary, leaves a very bitter taste in the mouth.
My own mother came late to olive oil. Those of a certain age will remember a time when it was only available in Britain at pharmacies. And then, in small bottles of 100 millilitres, for medical applications, like burns. No one could afford then to use it for cooking. And, in its “pure” form, there are indeed few who can afford it still today.