Check your oil, sir?

It is that time, once more, to check your oil. Your olive oil, that is.

When I was showing three Bostonians around Sciacca, they asked about getting oil. Being as the bed and breakfast they were staying at was owned by the owners of one of the good fantoie (oliofici) (olive oil makers) in town, we went there and they got some oil.

When I told my friends in Nicolosi about the fresh oil, and the three liter cans, they asked me to go back and get some more for them, and bring it to them when I visit this weekend.

I have learned a lot, maybe too much, about olive oil since living in Sicily. I think that most of what I have learned is true. First of all, some folks charge a premium is their olive oil is squeezed from pitted olives. My oil mavens all tell me that this process does not improve the oil at all. Then there is the holy grail about cold pressing the oil. Again, I am told it does not make a difference in taste. First press, I am told, is as good as last press. And the pressings all happen at the same time. Originally, when olives were pressed by weight, first press was the oil that ran out of the olives 'over night' before any pressure was applied. That was also the so called 'cold press'. That technology is, I am told, similar to crank starting cars now. It might have been great at the time, but folks do not do it anymore, nor do they have the equipment or know how to do it anymore. Finally, there is a man in neighboring Sambucca who is selling his 'estate bottled' oil, some of which is from a tree that is, reportedly, 360 years old, for a premium, indeed a super premium price in the US. Good for him, however, once again, the age of the tree does not impact the quality of the oil (so I am told).

What matters, and is rarely talked about in the states, is the freshness of the oil. Oil, to be good, must be less than 18 months old. Being as olives are harvested and pressed once a year, that basically means to be good, the olive oil must be within a year. After a year, my friends use their old oil to start fires in their wood fornos.

Virginity is another hot topic. Who knows the difference between virgin olive oil and extra virgin olive oil. I do, I do!! It is simply based on acidity. The less acid, the more virgin. There are three grades of olive oil - Extra virgin, virgin, and regular plain old olive oil, called lampara here, because it is good mainly for burning in oil lamps. Within each grade, there are sub grades ranked one to five, but these are usually not printed on labels, and the least acid oil is almost too rich to use, so is often mixed with virgin oil to bring it to extra virgin acidity levels.

Having said all that, I went to the frantoia to get some oil for my friends. I hesitate to say this, but it was not as fresh as it might have been. The olives were picked yesterday, despite threatening clouds. It could have been fresher, I suppose, if they were picked today.

They were brought in this morning, where they were washed and processed, but still, they were yesterday's olives. But I suppose that I can not have everything! After washing and processing, the beautiful green-gold Sicilian oil pours out of the stainless steel trough into plastic buckets, where it is then weighed, and put into large stainless steel containers, carefully tested and labelled in terms of origin and grade.

It is great to watch the owners of the olivetti's (olive orchards) watch carefully as their olives are processed. Of course they take enough oil with them at the end of the process to take care of their needs and the needs of some of their friends before leaving the rest with the fantoia to sell. And a year's supply for a family of four here is somewhere between thirty and forty kilos of oil. That is a lot of oil, as far as I am concerned. (and yes, here they measure oil by the kilo, not only by the liter.)

Anyway, the oil is then put in bottles or cans, in this case by hand rather than using the bottling machine, and ready for the customer. This oil is labelled D.O.P Mazara, which indicates to me it is one of the highest qualities of extra virgin olive oil one can buy.

Wait a second, is that Calogero, the waiter from La Vela in the picture with the bottler and one of the brothers who owns the Fantoia (and yours truly)? It certainly is. He has changed jobs, and gone from being the best waiter in Sciacca to working his butt off at this fantoia. Good for him. It was great to see him again. You may remember him as the guy that Fran kept taking pictures of with his arm around various nieces. La Vela still serves the best fish dishes in town, but I have missed him when I have gone there.

At any rate, for those of you lucky enough to get some of the oil I am taking to Jacque this weekend, this is how it got there.