In this installment
Capirete Olive Oil
An excellent mono-varietal unfiltered extra virgin olive oil made by a hundred-year-old family-owned bodega. They use exclusively Picual olives grown around Jerez in the Andalusia region of Spain. Picual olive oils have the best of both worlds. They start out smooth, sweet and buttery, then finish with a peppery kick. When you get up close and personal with this oil you notice its green banana nose. Think of the aroma you get from a under-ripe banana and you’ve got it. It’s got a bitter, peppery flavor in the finish. It’s a perfect oil for salads and bitter greens from your neighborhood farmer’s market.
What is unfiltered olive oil?
Most olive oils sent to America are filtered oils. The olive oil is run through a series of paper or cotton filters to clarify it and improve its presentation. Unfiltered oils are left in their natural state—cloudier and sometimes nearly opaque from the natural particles of olive sediment. You won’t be surprised to know though that oil producers aren’t in agreement on the benefits of filtering or not filtering.
Those who don’t, insist that their oil is more flavorful, that they are leaving in some of the essential goodness which others remove for fear that consumers can’t cope with the cloudiness of an unfiltered product. Ed Behr, whose taste I trust a great deal, wrote in The Art of Eating (#41), that, “. . . for flavor, olive oil is better left unfiltered. Good olive oil remains cloudy for a long time, one proof that it is good.”
Those who do filter, on the other hand, argue exactly the opposite. Giuseppe Grappolini, whose taste I also trust, gets downright argumentative about this subject. He argues adamantly that the sediment does nothing for the oil, and that those who fail to filter are simply trying to sell something (the sediment) to the consumer that would otherwise be disposed of.
I lean toward unfiltered oils. I like the thicker mouth feel, which reminds me of drinking coffee brewed in a French plunger pot. Makes me think of the countryside. Makes me want to go out in a Tuscan field on a cold November day and pour it onto toasted country bread. Makes me hungry just thinking about it. In the end, of course, it’s really your call. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that when you get equally passionate people arguing opposite sides of a culinary issue, you probably won’t go wrong with either option. Regardless, remember the decision to filter or not to filter will never raise an oil beyond the level of quality it was before it arrived at the filter.