In this installment
Roi Olive Oil
Why does olive oil cost more than other oils?
Roi Olive Oil
I relish the chance to visit the people who make the food we sell. Frequently unknown outside their own area I’m energized by being able to connect these small, often obscure, artisan producers with food loving folks who live in Ann Arbor and around the U.S. Still, each time I set out to travel, I take with me a small bit of trepidation, the fear that the people won’t live up to the mental image I’ve established, or to the standard of excellence that their product has set. Traveling to the town of Badalucco to see the folks, and the frantoio (oil mill), of the olive oil makers at ROI, was one of those exceptional experiences where the people behind the product turned out to be every bit as fine as the product.
The techniques used are traditional; stones for crushing, an old hydraulic press for extraction. The people were perfectly wonderful; as gentle and enticing as their oil. The setting superb; picturesque as a postcard, yet still down to earth as can be. The oil is excellent, typical of Liguria it’s gentle, sweet, and succulent; an elegant oil for eating as is, or for delicate dishes of all sorts. I left Liguria a week later with increased respect for the products of this fourth generation producer and an affection for the Boeri family who are behind it.
Franco, himself, is as personable as he is professional. Around forty, just under six feet tall, thin face and thin body, with a well trimmed beard and mustache. Wearing a pale pink shirt and a Mickey Mouse tie tucked into his worn blue jeans, he tours us through his family’s frantoio with obvious pride. Paolo, his son is 6. He comes running into the room while we’re touring the plant. “Papi!” he yells excitedly. The fifth generation cometh. Franco stops the tour to greet him with a big smile and a wave. A few minutes later his four year old daughter, Daria, arrives. Again Franco pauses; in a small family business kids and clients have to be able to mix effectively. “Principessa!” he welcomes her enthusiastically as she runs toward him. He sweeps her up into his arms, gives her a hug, and stops his talk to kiss her head.
More readily recognized in the US as “the Italian Riviera,” Liguria lies along the northwest coast of Italy.
It’s due north of Corsica and Sardinia, a sickle-shaped region along the coast of the Ligurian Sea. Starting at the French border, a half an hour east of Nice, the region runs along the shore, through the towns of San Remo and Cervo (to name just a few of the area’s famous spots) up to Genoa. There the coastline curves back toward the south, passing through Portofino and slopes gently down through the series of beautiful little isolated towns known as the Cinque Terre, all the way down to the border with Tuscany. Despite the coastal connotations of the name “Riviera,” a large part of Liguria is actually mountainous.
There’s a narrow band of low lands along the coast, but almost immediately after you leave the seaside, the terrain starts climbing up toward higher, less accessible, altitudes. Though the physical distance between the mountain villages and the ritzy resorts is surprisingly short, the spiritual separation couldn’t be clearer. The seaside today seems well off, home to hundreds of beautiful tourist destinations. In the mountains its a different story, a part of Liguria tourists rarely visit. The inland area is certainly beautiful; olive trees and herbs abound. But without tourists, beauty doesn’t easily beget wealth. The soil, already rocky, is hard to farm in such mountainous terrain. Crop yields are low. Grazing animals are few and far between—consequently cheese plays a small part in Ligurian cooking (and where it does it’s usually the “imported from other parts of Italy” Parmigiano or Pecorino). The poverty has taken its toll on the populace; many Ligurians left for the US, especially during the time of the Gold Rush (mid-19th century). There is still a strong Ligurian contingent in the Bay Area today, especially in North Beach.
The single most important theme of Ligurian cuisine is delicacy.
Flavors are almost never sharp or extreme, and the foods that are highly prized are valued most when they are in their mildest forms (basil, oil, pine nuts, etc.) Because the area was fairly poor, meat is used sparingly, primarily as a seasoning. Unlike the rest of Northern Italy, almost no cream or butter are used, and not much cheese either. Olive oil—which is very delicate—is used extensively, as are wild greens, fresh herbs and all sorts of vegetables. The latter are made into Torta di Verdure—vegetable tarts in thin pastry crusts. Ligurians rely on a surprising amount of chestnut and chickpea flour in their cooking. Chickpea flour is used to make an amazing (when it’s good) crepe/ flatbread called farinata. Pastas are often made with a blend of different flours. Wheat and chestnut is a common combination for trofie, the short, twisted pasta which is most often eaten with pesto. Corzetti are flat round pastas that are stamped with a wooden “seal”—corzetti stamps are available in different designs. Throughout the region, olive oil plays an integral part in people’s cooking, always gentle and delicate, but always delivering the depth of flavor and complexity that makes the area’s food so special.
Although Liguria lies all along the sea coast, seafood plays a smaller role in the region’s cooking than I’d have thought. The sea in this part of the world is “very poor;” the fish are generally small and bony. There are plenty of very, very good anchovies, a bit of bacalà (salt cod) and a lot of stockfish (air dried cod), bianchetti (teeny, tiny, very delicious and now very expensive) whitebait, squid, and octopus.
Back a thousand years or so ago the Genovese were big, big traders, helping to bring the exotic ingredients of Asia to Europe. But surprisingly, spices have never really played a big part in Ligurian cooking. The sailors, it seems, were so sick of the smell of the spices from their many months at sea that, when they returned home, they wanted no part of them in their food.
Badalucco, home of the Boeri family and the ROI frantoio (olive mill), is an historic little hill town with a population of about 1400.
The town sits halfway or so up the western slope of the Valle Argentina, the so-called “Silvery Valley,” named for the silver sheen of the olive leaves as they flutter in the sun. The area has been a source of excellent olives and oil since the time of the Romans. Mountains rise up on both sides of the Argentina river; at a number of spots the river can still be crossed on old rope bridges. Franco Boeri is the 4th generation of his family to make this oil. His great-grandfather, Giuseppe, started the business in 1900. He was followed by his son, Battista, grandson, Pippo, then finally, the fourth generation, which is Franco; with help from his wife, Rosella, Franco keeps things all in the family.
The mill impressed me as an effective blend of traditional techniques and modern technology. The place was spotlessly clean, which above and beyond the aesthetic appeal, quietly contributes to the quality of the finished oil. In the corner of the frantoio sits the stone crusher with two, traditional, six foot tall, foot and a half wide, granite millstones. Like many of the mills in Liguria and in other mountain areas, this one was originally water-powered. Electrical energy was the work of Franco’s father, Pippo, added in 1960.
With due modesty, Franco won’t take most of the credit for the quality of his oil. Instead, he says, “Liguria’s oil makers are lucky.” The region’s oil output is very small, so it hasn’t yet been corrupted by as many industrial shortcuts as the bigger oil producing areas in Southern Italy. Statistics back up his belief: Ligurian oil accounts for a minuscule 1/2 of 1 percent of total Italian production. Tuscany is 12 percent. Puglia—the heel of the Italian boot if you look at the map—leads the way contributing nearly half of Italy’s whole output.
Likewise, he says, “Liguria is lucky because of its location,” sandwiched as it is between the sea and the mountains. This creates a temperate climate without the extremes of heat seen in the South, or the fear of tree-killing cold that can come in Tuscany. Even the weather is mellow in Liguria—in such moderate conditions, Ligurian olives ripen very slowly and the olive harvest in Liguria takes place much later than anywhere else. Ligurians start picking in mid-November, a month or more after the harvest starts in Tuscany. The olives at the cooler, higher altitudes often aren’t taken off the tree until March, or even as late as April, a full four months after the Tuscans have finished.
The olives arrive at the mill from old groves above and alongside Badalucco, most at altitudes of 300 to 2100 feet above sea level.
Many are from trees growing on the incredible stone-walled terraces of the area. The Boeris have about a thousand trees of their own, and then buy additional olives from about 300 small farms in the valley. Because so much of the area is essentially on an incline heading up from the coast to the mountains, Ligurians long ago learned to terrace their lands in order to make them arable. It’s pretty incredible to see. Stone walls have been built all over the area, allowing farmers to level small stretches of hillside, often all the way up the mountain sides. Terraces are often only five or six feet wide, but without them, most of Liguria would be too steep to farm. All told there’s something like 250,000 miles of stone terrace walls squeezed into this sickle shaped region. Franco takes great care to make sure that olives are brought to the frantoio within twenty four hours of being picked, in order to keep quality up and avoid the risk of rising acidity levels.
ROI’s oil is made exclusively from the local Taggiasche olives.
Taggiasche olives are a small variety, not much bigger than the nail on your little finger, originally developed by the Benedictine monks in the town of Taggia. The olives are washed, then pressed by the granite pietre (stones). The resulting mash is spread onto nylon mats (known as fiscoli), which in turn are stacked about six feet high on a cart. The cart is wheeled a few feet into one of two Tuscan-built, fire engine red, Pieralisa brand presses. With their load of newly crushed olive pulp, the carts are slowly pushed up to the top of the presses, exerting cool, gentle pressure on the paste. Slowly, steadily the liquid in the paste trickles down where it is collected in tile basins. The solids—”L’osso del olive,” or the “bones of the olives,” says Franco—stay in the mats.
The liquid is then run through a small Westfalia separator which spins oil out one end and the olive’s natural water out the other. Typical of Liguria, the ROI oil is left cloudy and unfiltered. Franco stands fast on using traditional pressing techniques. He’s critical of other, more “modern” methods. They’ve improved the quality of lesser oils, but create too much turbulence which harms the quality of fine oil like that of ROI.
Franco’s fortitude and attention to detail bears fruit in the flavor of the oil. In its elegant dark glass bottles (to block out harmful light) the ROI oil is excellent. Mellow but never the less, very flavorful. Buttery, sweet, with subtle hints of almonds, and almost none of the pepperiness that marks the more rustic oils of Tuscany. ROI’s oil is excellent in any almost any usage, but especially so with salads and sautéed vegetables. It’s an excellent way to finish a vegetable soup or for pouring over freshly cooked fish or seafood. And, above and beyond all else, it’s ideal for preparing an authentic Ligurian pesto.
Why does olive oil cost more than other oils?
Because it is harder to produce. Sunflower seeds, peanuts, rapeseed, canola and the like can be processed in large mills, using continually turning “expeller” presses that produce large quantities of oil at relatively low prices. Good olive oil, by comparison, is still produced in much the same way it always has been—with all the costly, time-consuming traditions and limitations that nature imposes. Olive trees take years to start producing fruit. The best oils require that the olives be picked by hand. If you want to produce high quality oil, you can’t store the olives for weeks, or even days, after picking to facilitate a more even production schedule. The olives themselves have to be pressed within a day of picking, which means that mills must be located near the fields. The whole year’s production has to be pressed over a period of, perhaps, a few weeks; the equipment then sits unused for the other eleven months of the year. All of which adds up to relatively higher cost. Fortunately for us, the flavor of fine olive oil is as big as its price.