Extra Virginity:  The Sublime And Scandalous World Of Olive Oil, by Tom Mueller

To what extent should olive oil be treated like wine?  I consider myself in general a fan of olive oil, someone who appreciates using it as part of salad dressings as well as something to dip bread in and even something to cook with.  I’m aware that I have probably never had genuine extra virgin olive oil, and find myself intrigued at the possibility that olive oils have a sense of terroir similar to wines, although I am not sure that I would appreciate the strong bitterness that many olives have in their natural and pure form.  That said, the question remains.  This book demonstrates the wide gulf between the high quality of olive oil that exists in many regions of Italy and other places (even Australia and California) and the lack of quality in the olive oil that is treated more or less as a bargain commodity and is regularly adulterated by inferior seed oils through rampant corruption and tariff evasion principles.  I consider myself at least interested in being able to tell the difference between the good stuff and the bad stuff, even if there is a significant price premium for the good stuff.  Perhaps you feel the same way yourself.

This relatively short book of about 200 pages is divided into seven chapters and various other material.  The author begins with a prologue in which he discusses his search for the history and tragedy of olive oil.  He then discusses the lives of people who find themselves drawn to grow olives despite the struggles of making a living honestly in the field as an olive grower (1).  This leads to a discussion of the large companies and often disobeyed regulations that govern olive oil in the contemporary world (2) as well as the lengthy history of the use of olives for sacred and profane purposes from the ancient world to today (3).  The author discusses the lovely burn and the ways in which one can develop a taste for high quality olive oil and differentiate between different varieties (4), and also talks about the low quality industrial oil that is generally made of various sources–often rapeseed or cottonseed oil–and marketed under false pretense (5).  The author discusses food revolutions and how this state of affairs came to be (6) as well as the new worlds of oil that exist in the United States and Australia where olives and their growing techniques have been imported (7).  The author then closes with a discussion of mythologies as well as a glossary, a discussion of how to choose good oil, and some acknowledgments.

This book raises some fascinating questions as to how it is that olive oil can be treated as an item worth paying for quality rather than simply as a cheap commodity.  For olive oil to be profitable to grow in an artisan, family farm fashion, it will be necessary for enough people to develop a taste for the good stuff so that it can command a considerable price premium over inferior material.  And once there is enough money in growing good olives and enough of an ability to distinguish among grades of quality, then the high profitability of cheating will be diminished with an informed populace that is willing to pay for that which is grown and manufactured the right way.  How much consumer education is necessary for this to happen, and is it something that can be expected?  Whether or not you are as passionate about olive oil and its uses in good food as I am, this is a question that I believe is worth asking and worth investigating, not least because I come from a family farming background myself and appreciate the difficulties and importance of good farming and food preparation practices.