Paul Krugman has a pretty good op-ed today on oil production - and how the rate of oil consumption is probably more important for the price of oil in the medium and long run. But a few pages back - on the business page - runs another analysis of oil production: the fight over the national provenance of olive oil in Europe. Maybe not earth shattering in its importance, but interesting nonetheless.
Into the Berio containers, the ones with labels that say “Imported from Italy,” goes olive oil from Spain, Greece and Tunisia. Occasionally, the oil is from Italy itself, though usually not from Lucca, the celebrated olive-growing region in Tuscany that is the factory’s home.
The Italian olive oil industry has long been built on this illusion. Consumers the world over want Italian olive oil because it is supposed to be the finest, redolent of la dolce vita, and so the industry finds a way to give it to them, sort of.
In truth, Italy does not grow enough olives to meet even its own demand, let alone foreigners’. Spain, not Italy, actually has the world’s largest olive harvest. As a result, Italy is one of the world’s leading importers of olive oil, part consumed, the rest re-exported with newly assumed Italian cachet.
I’m not sure how long this trend will jibe with the EU’s push for strict appellation of food products. If Italy pushes for recognition that only a true Parmigiana cheese can be labelled Parmesan (I’m not sure inferior American and Argentinian imitators hurt the original), it’s hard to see how the same logic wouldn’t apply here.
And part of me is sympathetic to the complaints of misleading marketing. I’m continually shocked at the extent to which olive oil is sold simply on cache and not on flavor. For beyond type of pressing (I take it as a given that most cooks use extra-virgin), the most important factor in the quality and flavor of an oil is its age. Harvested in the fall, the new olive oils available in mid-winter are alive with fruity, peppery and complex flavor. While an olive oil will be good for some two years or so afterward, it steadily loses character as time goes on. Yet you wouldn’t know this by scanning the shelves of your gourmet foods provider, your North End market or your Whole Foods store. Expensive boutique brands abound, to be sure, and some of them may be fine, but are conspicuously without any harvest date for the most part. And the few that do have dates are two years old. In sum, consumer and retailer alike seem miseducated about what makes a good oil.
Then again, maybe that’s OK. I can’t help but recall a local TV news investigative piece on outlet clothing stores, indignant at sold polyester versions of rayon designer wear sold under the same brand. The label representative just shrugged and said, “if people can’t tell the difference between the two fabrics and are essentially buying the look and the name on the label, then they’re happy aren’t they?” Marketers may be especially misleading in peddling supposedly quality product, but they wouldn’t be able to get away with it if it weren’t for our collective lack of cultural knowledge and the sheer middlebrow will to be cultured consumers.
In any case, if I may go out on a limb, I predict that just as Spanish cuisine is gaining cache among American foodies, Spanish and other Mediterranean olive oils will soon be marketable in their own right.
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