Nocellara del Belice olives have been growing in western Sicily since it was colonized by the ancient Greeks thousands of years ago, but it wasn’t until 1989 that someone thought to make an olive oil made from 100% Nocellara olives to put onto the market. Why? The answer is quite simple: The olives are too good. There are  over 600 olive varieties growing in Italy, and the Nocellara del Belice olive is one of the top 3. It is huge as far as olive proportions go, round like the walnut, or rather hazelnut after which it is named and has a flavor and crunchiness that is very hard to beat. There are companies all over the world who want to buy these olives to sell whole, cracked, marinated, in brine, for martinis, etc. and they are willing to pay good money for them. Why, then, would you press them into olive oil? Olive oil is so much easier to disguise.

If you tried to sell these companies a bunch of bruised, overripe, half-oxidized olives, they would take one look and decline. You need olives that are beautiful to see, big, green, round, fleshy, and full of flavor, just like Nocellaras, to sell. Those bruised, overripe, half-oxidized olives? They very often become olive oil. And not just plain old olive oil, but also olive oil labeled as “first pressed”, “cold pressed” and “extra virgin”…because that’s what they are…technically speaking. Who’s to know? Who can tell? “Cold pressed” just means that the temperature during pressing didn’t rise above 80°F (27°C) and “first pressed” means that the olives were pressed by mechanical means, instead of extracting the oils using chemicals, “Extra Virgin” means that the acidity level in the oil is 0.8% or lower (easily doctored by additives or blending). All are very important, but alone, they don’t make the oil quality. What about the olives themselves? First, cold pressing needs to be paired with a high quality olive, correct harvesting methods and time frames and proper storage. It sounds like a lot, and maybe it is, and that is what most olive oils companies out there are counting on: the fact that seeing “cold pressed” is enough for you to put it in your shopping cart and take it home.

At Olio Verde, we remain true to the best and most natural ways of making extra virgin olive oil, but sadly, most olive oil producers do not. There are many ways to “get around” the tedious and costly production process and still slap “extra virgin” on the bottle that we could go on forever. But today, we would like to call your attention to only one of them, the most recent.

One of the ways of doctoring and olive oil’s organoleptic characteristics is known as “deodorizing”. When an olive oil is made with olives that have begun the fermentation process, due to damaged fruit or too much time between the harvest and the pressing, they produce an oil with an unpleasant taste and smell, along with a higher acidity level. These faults would not allow the oil to be called “extra virgin”, and as a result, the oil gets “deodorized”. What does that mean? Well, the process of deodorizing does exactly what the name implies, it rids the oil of these unwanted characteristics so that it can then be blended with a small quantity of high quality extra virgin, allowing it to pass as the real thing (at least in sensory tests).

But there is one substance that olive oil producers cannot get rid of when dealing with inferior quality olive oil: alkyl esters. These are the compounds present in olive oil as a result of the fermentation process. They cause the production of methyl and ethyl acids and free fatty acids from triglycerides. A high level of alkyl esters will still be present in the oil’s chemical makeup, leaving a trail of evidence. A simple test will reveal the levels present in the oil, and, subsequently, the quality of the oil.

The European Union passed a law that went into effect on April 1, 2011, which authorizes the sale of “extra virgin” olive oil with up to 75 milligrams of alkyl esters per kilo of olive oil. The problem is that a high quality extra virgin olive oil made using the correct methods, will only have about 10-15 milligrams of alkyl esters per kilo of oil. This new regulation allows for much more than that amount! In short, this new regulation allows inferior quality olive oil to have a premium name. Furthermore, it does nothing to discourage olive oil companies from producing low quality olive oil and using unethhical and dishonest methods! Basically, it’s legal to call an olive oil “extra virgin” if its acidity level is 0,8% or less and its alkyl ester level is no greater than 75 milligrams per kilo, but it doesn’t matter if the oil is within that range naturally or if it’s been doctored to the high heavens!

To be anywhere near an acceptable amount, it would have to go down to 30-40 mg per kg, but, then again, for an extra virgin to have an truly acceptable acidity level, the percentage would have to go from 0,8% to 0,4%…a 50% decrease! So the E.U. has done here what they previously did with the acidity level: make it higher than it should be, but not so high as to cause an all-out scandal. After all, less stringent regulations allow for the most European producers possible to fit into the extra virgin category, thus helping Europe’s income. I guess some limit is better than no limit at all, as it was before April. At least now the European Union has a way to analyze oil and minimize (somewhat) fraud.  - AM