Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil is like “French Wine” or “Swiss Chocolate” or “German Cars”… Italy isn’t the largest producer of Olive Oil (Spain is) but Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil is in its own class… not to take anything away from any other country as there is certainly high quality products elsewhere, possibly superior (let’s not get crazy) but we’re talking about marketing and image not facts.

In much of Italy, olive oil is produced from small family groves where they care for their own trees, pick their own olives and bring them to local mills to produce their oil.  Many families only produce enough olive oil for personal use but larger groves may also have additional oil to sell.

The small mills that are very common throughout the south (as I’m sure they are in other areas as well) press the olives for area farmers and in turn will take payment in cash or in oil.  Pretty straight forward right?

The mills that have accepted payment in oil now have a good amount of oil that they need to sell, so they call or are called upon by wholesalers.  The mills will watch the market price of oil and hold onto it if it is low, sell it if it is high (the market game.) Once they decide to sell, the wholesaler shows up with a truck, sucks up the oil and takes it away… simple right?  The problem is, there is only one “wholesaler” in our area of Calabria…. you would think there would be some competition wouldn’t you? NOPE.  Is it surprising? NOPE… but that’s another story.

This wholesaler is from another region of Italy, so after he sucks the “life” out of Calabria (or parts of it at least) he returns to his region where the company either sells it in bulk or bottles it or mixes it with seed oil or takes a bath in it… it doesn’t really matter at that point.  So the wonderful oil that is produced in Calabria and other areas of the south is taken away to other regions and sold as “their oil”… so in the eyes of the world, the best olive oil is made where? I would guess that most people would say Tuscany… not because the world has tasted Tuscany’s local oil (which is wonderful) but because the south, which is the leading producer of olive oil in Italy is supplying the company’s based in Tuscany with oil to sell to the world.  I would love to say that I’m upset that southern Italy isn’t getting recognized but to be honest I’d rather not have the world know because by the time they actually taste that bottle of olive oil it may be mixed with Spanish oil, Turkish oil, Greek oil, hazelnut oil or maybe even motor oil!

So the moral of the story is, no matter what region’s olive oil you prefer: buy local or buy from a small company that supports local farmers and you’ll taste a world of difference.