The 4 most common (but not-obvious) questions about olive oil
When our guests come to visit us at Podere il Casale to buy our Extra Virgin Olive Oil, they ask us many questions to better understand the production methods. Often their curiosity focuses on the expressions they heard or read on labels, other times they focus on sensory characteristics or conservation methods. We have decided to collect the 4 most frequent questions and try to answer. Hoping to help you in the choice of a quality extra virgin olive oil. Are you ready?
1. How and for how long will extra virgin olive oil keep?
This is the most common question and is an extremely practical and smart question. To preserve the extra-virgin olive oil, two types of containers are recommended: steel cans and dark glass bottles. Our advice is to use glass because bottling the oil means reducing the risk of rancidity. Of course the oil must be kept absolutely away from light sources, which changes its organoleptic characteristics over time, and from heat sources (for the same reason). Furthermore, another enemy is oxygen. If kept in the right way a good extra virgin olive oil can last for 16-18 months. But be careful, unlike wine, oil does not improve with time and, even if well preserved, its organoleptic characteristics worsen in time.
2. What does Cold Pressed mean? Is it a guarantee of quality?
Cold pressing is not a guarantee of quality. Certainly a cold-pressed oil is better. But the squeezing method alone is not enough to guarantee that an oil is good. The quality of an oil depends on several factors such as the variety of olives used, the vintage, the age of the olive trees and their maintenance. Cold pressing occurs at a temperature lower than 27 ° and allows the organoleptic characteristics to remain intact and not denatured by temperature. Our oil is obtained, of course, from cold-pressed olives.
3. How important is the color of the oil?
Surely buying an oil that tends to amber is wrong because you are faced with an oil that is perhaps old and certainly oxidized. The newly pressed oil varies its color from green to gold. But much of the color depends both on the variety of olives used and on the amount of chlorophyll present in the olives. If you are facing a “new” oil, even if its color tends to be more gold than green, it is important that its color is intense (if it is tenuous it may be old) and that it has green reflections. But the advice we give you is to buy the oil from producers you trust. Our freshly pressed oil has a deep green color and a fruity aroma with hints of almond.
4. Filtered or unfiltered?
Well this question is difficult to answer because there is no correct answer. In fact the filtered and unfiltered oils have different positive characteristics. The unfiltered extra virgin olive oil has a less clear color, but preserves the natural sediments, therefore of the most intense aromas and flavors. These positive characteristics have the negative implication in the shelf life. The filtered oil is clearer and lasts longer.
