Just the other day, I was talking on the phone with my friend Toni back home in the U.S., telling her about all that had been going on here this past month with the harvest and pressing. Since she has little knowledge about olive oil, I took her (seemingly) simple question on how to tell if an olive oil is high quality or not, as an invitation to go into my usual spiel on olive oil and Olio Verde in particular. I went on and on until I got to the part about how special our Nocellara del Belice olives are…so plump and green, good for both eating and pressing, with their D.O.P. status, and….. My blabber was interrupted by ”What the heck does D.O.P. mean?” I laughed at her frankness and explained it to her and didn’t think more about it until later that night as the day’s events re-played in my head. That’s when it hit me: of course Toni didn’t know what D.O.P. stood for, after all, it’s an acronym for the Italian Denominazione di Origine Protetta. In English, it would be P.D.O., or Protected Designation of Origin…but even then, only total foodies (like yours truly) would bother with things like that! If Toni didn’t know what D.O.P. stands for, then my guess was that many readers do not either. Sure, one could easily do an internet search and get the answer, but I would still like to clarify what “the heck” we are writing about.

D.O.P is a product label that was established by the European Union in 1992 to protect the names of regional foods. This designation is meant to keep producers of regional products safe from unfair competition and also to avoid the possibility of producers misleading customers by trying to pass off their non-genuine products (which may be of inferior quality or have a different flavor than the genuine ones) under a prestigious label.

The notion of PDO emphasizes the importance of using raw materials and production methods (think: “recipes”) from a certain region as a measure of authenticity. The European Union has bilateral agreements with some countries  that help enforce these laws. The U.S., however, is not one of them, which is why, for example, you can find certain brands (which will remain unnamed for ethic’s sake) which offer what they like to call ”parmesan” even though you and I both know that their product is light years away from the real thing! Because the U.S. does not prohibit the use of that name for something so different from real parmesan, you have hundreds of products on the market labeled as such, but that have nothing in common whatsoever. Here in Italy, no cheese is allowed to call itself “parmigiano”, unless it is produced in certain designated areas of Emilia Romagna, using a certain procedure with the milk from certain cows. The same goes for every D.O.P. product.

The Nocellara olive, with its particularly crunchy flesh, growing and harvesting techniques, and its curing and pressing style, is so unique that the European government acknowledged its typicity, both as an eating olive (cured) and as olive oil (pressed), with a double D.O.P. Needless to say, it’s not easy to get such a recognition from the Italian government! Proof that Olio Verde is DOUBLY one of a kind, first for its original, take-no-prisoners Becchina-branded production style, then for the uniqueness of its ingredient!

Remember, no oil can claim to be made from Nocellara del Belice olives, unless it comes from Nocellara del Belice olives grown in the Valle del Belice: Castelvetrano (which includes Selinunte), Campobello di Mazara, Gibellina, Santa Ninfa, Partanna, plus another 9 surrounding villages. Even if you took a Nocellara del Belice olive tree and transplanted it to another part of Sicily, it could no longer be called “Nocellara del Belice” because it is outside of the designated area!   – AM