Italy produces between a quarter and a third of the world’s olive oil and is second only to Spain in its quantity of production.
Olive trees are cultivated in all of the Italian regions except Lombardy and Piedmont and the Italians themselves consume so much oil (an average of 12ltrs of oil a year) that some has to be imported for native consumption.
Olives have been cultivated in Italy since 600BC when the Greeks introduced the tree believing that its oil had medicinal, fortifying qualities.
The Romans drank olive oil as an aphrodisiac but with the fall of the Roman Empire olive groves were abandoned as the tradition of using the oil was lost until Renaissance times, some 1000 years later.
Nowadays, choosing oil is like choosing wine, such is the wealth of varieties and styles. Oils from Liguria, made from the tiny taggiasca olive, are the most elegant and light. The olives are picked between December to January when they are almost ripe while the Tuscans, who prefer their oil spicy and peppery, pick the olives as early as October when they are still green and their acidity very low. In Puglia and the south in general the oil has an intense, fruity flavour because it is made with fully ripened olives whose acidity is at the highest permitted level.
After being picked the olives are traditionally taken to the mill where they are crushed and the paste spread on round hemp pads which are piled up on a screw press. Of the liquid that is run off about 30% is oil, the rest is water. The two separate and the oil can be skimmed off the top.
Nowadays, however, most olive oil is extracted using a centrifuge. This oil can still be extra virgin, first cold pressed as long as the process does not expose it to temperatures of over 30C, no chemicals are added to aid extraction and the acidity level is less than 0.8%.
Virgin olive oil has to have less than ? % acid and can thus be made using more mature olives which give a greater yield. Finally there is olive oil which is usually extracted using heat, often from the pulp left over from extracting the extra virgin oil.
When you have chosen your oil the Italian Ministry of Agriculture recommends using it within 18 months of bottling and 6 weeks of opening. As it is sensitive to sunlight, clear bottles of olive oil are best kept in a dark cupboard.
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