The 4,000-Year-Old (Extra) Virgin

Unearthing EVOO’s Dark Underbelly with Victoria Olive Oil Co.’s Cherilee Dick

The history of olive oil is as long as it is strange: Ritualized in religious and sporting ceremonies, recommended as a topical contraceptive (by Aristotle, no less), and counterfeited by the same criminal organizations that run hard drugs and guns. While salt is generally regarded as the most important food ingredient in the history of humanity, olive oil might be the most interesting.

Today, fine quality, cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) is regarded as a staple of haute cuisine—a belief so pervasive that there’s very likely a bottle of mass-produced, supermarket-bought EVOO in your pantry. After all, it’s still ‘extra virgin,’ right? Once widely accepted as a signifier of the highest quality oil, this common assumption is now under increasing scrutiny.

We all believe that EVOO is the pinnacle of olive oil production, but…why? As Cherilee Dick, owner of Victoria Olive Oil Co., points out: “Olive oil should always be the unfiltered first press of the olive.” This may sound obvious, but industrialization has complicated the process—stone presses have given way to stainless steel crushers, centrifuges, and hammer mills. In the quest for efficiency, new technologies evolved to increase yields, like chemical solvents and heat applications. Oil that showed poorly after first pressing could now be refined to bring it in line with the technical requirements that define high quality olive oil.

The classification “extra virgin” is only achieved after passing laboratory testing for specific levels of polyphenols, free fatty acids, oleic acids, and (naturally occurring) peroxide—with a sensory imperative that it’s also “fresh” and void of obvious taste and aroma defects. But, according to Cherilee, North American labelling requirements make this distinction almost irrelevant: “Ten percent of that bottle needs to be actual EVOO, and it canstill say ‘extra virgin’ on the label. If it doesn’t have a crush date, a harvest date, and an expiry date on the bottle, it’s not 100% extra virgin olive oil.”

As recently as 2019, The American Olive Oil Producers Association filed a citizen petition urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to “promulgate regulations for the standards of identity for olive oil and olive-pomace oil,” a heavily refined byproduct. The petition claims that lack of proper identification has led to “widespread mislabeling of grades, adulteration, consumer mistrust, and unfair and unethical industry business practices,” and that the “continued absence of an enforceable standard is harming consumers, […] leaving them unable to differentiate between high quality extra virgin olive oil and low-quality, old or rancid oils, as well as cheap by-products.”

Many times it’s not just the ‘extra virgin’ designation that’s questionable—but rather, is it olive oil at all? Pressing olives is a relatively expensive process, far more costly than mixing in seed oils like sunflower, canola or rapeseed—which can then be chemically deodorized and flavored to create a passable EVOO imitation. These underhanded techniques aren’t just a devaluation of flavour—they severely undermine any health benefits associated with pure EVOO, and leave consumers who suffer from allergies or sensitivities vulnerable to unknowing exposure.

And it’s not as simple as assuming that only cheaper oils are fraudulent. Sadly, there’s no reason to believe that expensive, or ‘organic’ oils are pure. According to Forbes magazine, “There are enough studies by olive oil associations and food authorities that document instances when a more expensive olive oil is simply a more elaborate fraud.”

Although authentic, 100-percent EVOO subscribes to a baseline purity—without being refined, blended, or tampered with using adulterating technology—this isn’t to say that technology can’t play a positive role: most high-volume processors of quality EVOO have turned to centrifuges to separate their oil from the olive “must” (the freshly crushed juice of the olive) in a gentle, low-impact environment that maximizes yield while maintaining quality.

When selecting your olive oil, there are some simple rules of thumb to follow: “If you ever see an EVOO in clear glass, don’t buy it,” says Cherilee. In a perfect world, the olive oil wouldn’t even leave its “fusti”— a traditional closed-top, steel keg with a pouring spigot that eliminates light penetration, oxidization, and temperature fluctuations—until the oil has been selected by a customer, and then poured off fresh into a dark glass bottle. But a dark amber, or at least green, bottle from a store shelf is a good first step.

Is all this attention and protection just theatrics? Well, consider this: Olive oil is a fruit juice. What’s the best fruit juice you’ve ever had? Did it sit for six months after extraction, on a warm shelf? Was it chemically extracted from the fruit skins after first pressing? Olive oil contains a number of naturally occurring preservatives (peroxide being the strongest) that your daily OJ may not, but the principle remains the same.

Stepping into a dedicated olive oil store presents you with a range of complexities you might never have associated with the ubiquitous, stout bottle that’s been on hand in your kitchen since—forever. Tasting notes reference stone fruits, artichoke, cut grass, nuts, green bananas, sweet tomato, melon, and dandelion greens. Different varietals of olive present vastly differently flavour profiles—from the clean, bright, mild Hojiblanca, to the pungent, peppery, intense Coratina—and many in between.

We associate olive oil production with the world’s major players: Spain, Italy, Greece—but just like wine, there are two olive harvests each year—one in the more popular northern hemisphere regions listed above, and also a major southern hemisphere harvest—so right now the freshest (and therefore, best) products on the market are from Chile, Australia, and South Africa.

So how do we tell the good from the bad? Formal tasting procedures for olive oil also mimic that of wine: bring the oil to room temperature (from its recommended storage temperature of 12-15 degrees celsius) by cupping its container and covering the opening with one palm, then inhale the aromatics, and finally taste while “bubbling” air in through your pursed lips, to oxygenate and release the oil’s flavour potential.

Yes, it sounds like overkill. But it’s hard to explain just how much of a leap there is between average, supermarket-shelf olive oil and the Real Deal. There’s serious care and attention that goes into authentic olive oil production that goes well beyond merely sourcing olives and pressing or centrifuging, packaging, labelling, and shipping.

Traditional olive farmers wait until the first heavy rain of the season, then begin the harvest. Then, as Cherilee recounts, “the farmers will follow that harvest to wherever it’s pressed and crushed, stay all night to wait until it’s all bottled, then take it all home with them”—knowing that their oil is pure, and hasn’t been adulterated or skimmed to help create a different, fraudulent EVOO.

There’s a good reason for this apparent paranoia. The latest incident in a longstanding battle between olive oil producers and organized crime syndicates (not kidding) occurred in 2017—when the Italian Carabinieri arrested 33 suspects linked to the Calabrian mafia for allegedly exporting adulterated EVOO. Testing revealed that the product was actually inexpensive olive pomace oil. A 60 Minutes exposé referred to a ring of “agro mafia”—and estimated their illegal olive oil revenue at $16 billion a year. Fake fruit juice may seem an unlikely object for trafficking, but it turns out the profit margin on faux olive oil is more than that of cocaine.

Despite these attacks on the integrity of the olive oil trade, there’s a historic endurance that reassures us its authenticity will prevail. This fruity, peppery nectar has survived for millennia and remains as richly intertwined with our daily routines as ever. Symbolically, an olive tree will never naturally die. It will never stop producing fruit. Even if it burns to the ground, a shoot will reemerge and continue to grow.

That resilience will ensure that it remains a trusted accoutrement in all of our kitchens, well into the future. And by taking the time to get to know this often taken-for-granted, complex ingredient, it’ll only pay dividends for your culinary adventures.