In this installment
Zingerman’s Peranzana Olive Oil
Terraced Olive Oil Serving Dish
Guide for the perplexed olive oil buyer
What is extra virgin anyways?
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.
Terraced Olive Oil Serving Dish
The all-white dish has terraced steps like an in-ground swimming pool. The oil at the first step is light gold, and then the deeper layers graduate to richer and darker tones, until the center, which is an earthy forest green. It’s a gorgeous, dramatic way to show off great olive oil. Designed by New York artist Mary Judge, the dish is hand-finished terracotta and it’s completely dishwasher safe.
A guide for the perplexed olive oil buyer
It’s hard to believe that when we opened Zingerman’s in 1982 you could barely find a bottle of extra virgin olive oil in Ann Arbor. Today we sell thousands of bottles of fine olive oil every year—the best oils from Spain, Italy, Greece, the United States and France. Yet as much as things have changed over the
years the basics of olive oil—its terminology and mythology; the ins and outs of buying, cooking with, and eating it; the vagaries of weather, crop years, and producers’ personalities—remain as they have been for centuries. And while these may be “the basics,” they can be more than a bit intimidating for the inexperienced olive oil buyer, and eater, to deal with.
Having sold so many bottles over the years (not to mention the hundreds I’ve consumed in my own kitchen), I’ve come to realize that there’s a standard set of questions nearly every olive oil buyer asks. So forgive me for projecting my own shyness onto you, the prospective olive oil buyer, so that I can help you avoid having to ask. I’ll answer a couple questions or so in each installment.
What is extra virgin anyways?
This is nearly always the first question. It’s a good one. Most food lovers these days have at least heard the term but never the less the name alone can still be fodder for more than a few chuckles. (“What’s an extra virgin?” is the usual joke. Get it?) But “extra virgin” is serious stuff in the olive oil world.
Traditionally produced extra virgin oils, made from the first pressing of olives, are essentially little more than the juice of the olive. Technically, “extra virgin” is a grade of olive oil—usually indicating the highest quality—distinguished by its naturally low levels of free oleic acid. To qualify as “extra virgin,” an olive oil must have a free acid count of less than 1 percent.
Oils made from lesser quality olives, or from the residue of first pressing oils, are significantly less flavorful and have much higher levels of free acidity. The higher the free acid level, the lower the grade; “virgin” olive oil has two to three times the free acid of an extra virgin oil. It is a measurement of how much of the fat in the oil has oxidized. In the case of olive oil, the less oxidation—and hence, the lower the level of free oleic acid—the better. Take note that “free acid” doesn’t mean the oil will taste acidic. To the contrary, oils with high levels of free oleic acid tend to taste either unpleasantly, cloyingly sweet (as in overripe fruit) or, alternatively, off-puttingly of benzine.
“Olive Oil”—the term is somewhat deceptive since you have to look for the absence of the words “extra virgin”—is the chemically refined stuff they sell at the supermarket. Despite its innocent sounding name, it’s actually the lowest edible grade of oil and by far the least flavorful. (It used to be known as “pure” olive oil and you may still see it referred to as such.) “Pomace” oil is pressed from the olive solids—skin, pulp and pits—left after the first pressing has been completed. It has little flavor, and is of little use to anyone who’s after the great taste of good olive oil. Sadly I’ve seen gallons of the stuff intentionally on display on the counters of upscale restaurants that apparently fail to grasp the low-grade message they’re unintentionally sending.
The logical—and intended—significance of the term “extra virgin” is that it would be used on only the highest quality olive oils.
Unfortunately, in today’s high-tech world it is possible to take a low-grade, essentially flavorless olive oil and chemically remove or reduce its free acidity down to a level that would technically qualify it as “extra virgin.” Oil of this sort has appeared on the market in the United States and other countries. If you’ve had real extra virgin olive oil, you’ll notice the difference immediately. The low-grade pretender costs about half as much. I’ve seen gallons of “extra virgin olive oil” on sale for something like $7. This is the Mediterranean equivalent of those big bottles of “vanilla extract” they sell to tourists coming home from Mexico. It’s just way too cheap to be the real thing. Sadly, the first-time buyer may unknowingly take home this phony “extra virgin oil” thinking they got a really good deal. But after using it at home they’ll quickly decide that olive oil was just one more example of modern marketing hype with no real redeeming value. And that would be a shame.
Other than a price that’s way too low to be real, the easiest way to spot this type of oil is to taste it. It will taste greasy and have hardly any olive flavor. And tasted next to a good quality extra virgin olive oil the difference in flavor, texture and aroma will be like night and day.
Moral of the story? Extra virgin olive oil is usually best. But, to be sure, buy from a reputable olive oil seller and try to taste before you buy.