In this installment
Zingerman’s Peranzana Olive Oil
Guide for the perplexed olive oil buyer
How do we know our oil is the real deal?
Zingerman’s Peranzana Olive Oil
The oil is pressed for Zingerman’s by Marina Colonna at her farm, the Masseria Bosco Pontoni, in the Molise region of Italy. If you don’t have an atlas handy and, like most people, don’t know where the Molise is, it’s a very rural province on the eastern edge of Italy, slightly south of the center of the country. The Colonnas are an ancient family, one that can trace its roots back to the time of the Romans. At Zingerman’s, we trace our Colonna connection to the time we first started buying Marina’s oil in the late 80s. The story of this particular oil started nearly three years ago when Mo visited Marina at her farm. Over dinner they conspired to put together a special blend of oil we could bring to Ann Arbor, something with a bit different flavor profile than the already fine oil we were getting from Marina.
As it turned out, the “blend” became a single varietal. From a tasting of about twenty different oils, we picked the one from Marina’s peranzana olives. As far as we know this is the only straight bottling of peranzana oil in the US. It’s a very old variety that seems to have its (figurative) roots in France since it’s also known in Italy as “Provenzale” and was introduced to Central Italy by the Princes Di Sangro, descendants of the Dukes of Bourgogne, and is fairly unusual even in Italy.
The Peranzana oil has a really nice aroma that’s reminiscent of green apples. It has a bright, lively olive flavor that hints of green grass, artichokes, maybe a little hint of almond. It finishes with just a touch of that green olive bitterness that’s really nice in an oil. It’s great for just about everything— salads, soups, seafood, steaks, pasta, bruschetta, really good beans or sautéed greens with garlic.
How do we know our oil is the real deal?
Every couple years it seems a big news story breaks about the dangers of adulterated extra virgin olive oil.
The oils are invariably from producers who are blending olives from many sources. They’re mixing less expensive oils in, ones that are possibly not from the region they say they are, possibly not extra virgin. They cut costs, they cut the quality of the oil, they mislabel. This is totally illegal. But it’s not uncommon in the Big Olive Oil Industry.
How do we know that Zingerman’s olive oils aren’t subject to this kind of adulteration? We’re buying our oils directly from farmers (with very few exceptions). They make olive oil using only the olives grown on their own estates. Most bottle only a couple thousand liters annually, as compared to the millions of bottles that come from big companies. They laugh at the idea that they’re importing containers of cheap oil to make a buck. We’ve visited most of them and, frankly, when you see the small scale of their production and the handiwork that goes into it, it’s no surprise that they’re baffled.
We taste every olive oil we carry, usually many times a year. We make sure that the quality is still up to snuff. It’s not hard to spot the fakers. You really can taste the difference.