Olive Oil Tasting with Carlo

Did I mention Carlo is a professional olive oil taster? Well, he is. Just when we thought he couldn’t get any cooler, he drives up on antique Vespa and begins the tour letting us know he is also an official olive oil tester for the Province of Siena.

Carlo showing us the vineyard and the burned (yellow) leaves from the heat and the drought.

He started by showing us the vineyards and how they are suffering from the drought this year. Many of the leaves are burned as are the grapes because of the heat. The grapes also aren’t growing well, because they can’t get enough water. If they don’t get rain in the next 10 days they will lose a lot of their wine production this year. Carlo has said he has never seen a drought in Tuscany like they have had this year in all of his years of farming.

Ladder on a tree in the olive orchard. They purposefully prune the middle of the trees so that the you can easily pick the olives from the perimeter. The pruning also makes those olives on the perimeter bigger.

He then introduced us to the world of olive farming and olive oil production. We started in the orchard to learn about the trees, the pruning, and the harvest, and then it moved into a quick lesson to learn about olive oil, what to taste for, how to select a good olive oil to buy.

Carlotta who has worked for the family for several years, did the translation for Carlo during the instruction and tasting.

It all commenced in a ‘tasting game’ where we rated 4 different olive oils and they helped us to recognize defects in oils and those qualities that make a good oil. After tasting we judged the oils on several qualities (spicy, bitter, density, fruitiness, sweetness, balance, etc.) that make a good oil and then compared our ratings to Carlo’s ratings. Proud to say that I recognized the rancid oil…ha, ha.

The top 5 things I learned were:

Always buy extra virgin olive oil – it’s the best quality. Don’t bother with regular olive oil, the quality isn’t good.
The olive oil you buy for cooking should be different than the one you put on your salad that is important for taste. Your cooking oil should be mild so as not to interfere with the taste of your dish.
If you want Italian oil, look on the back label to make sure it is Italian olives, not just ‘bottled in Italy’ on the front label.
Store your oil in a dark bottle and don’t buy a quantity that you can’t go through in 90 days.
If you reuse a bottle to store your oil, make sure to clean it in the dishwasher each time you refill it including the stopper. If you don’t, the older oil on the rim will turn rancid and could turn your new oil rancid.