Castello di Cacchiano Olive Oil

A view from the castle of Cacchiano.

It is illegal to cut down an olive tree in Tuscany without a permit. That’s not to say that there are thousands of Giovanni Appleseeds in jail in Florence. If you do cut down an olive tree you just have to plant another one to replace it. The law is a product of the last century. But the idea isn’t new. There have been laws regulating olive trees since Hammurabi ruled Babylon nearly 4,000 years ago.

Part of what makes Tuscany so charming to us visitors is that the countryside looks pretty much like it did 400 years ago. The landscape is still all rolling hills topped with fortified castles that overlook forests, vineyards, and groves of olive trees. The castles used to house nobility that maintained small armies to protect the local peasants from marauding soldiers (for a price, naturally). Today many of the castles are still private residences, but the main industry has shifted from war to agriculture. The primary products are wine and olive oil.

Olive oil isn’t a cash crop in Tuscany.

Many Tuscan olive oil producers lose money on their oil. The yield at Castello di Cacchiano, a thousand year old estate near Siena in Tuscany, is about fifteen pounds of olives per tree. That translates into less than a liter of oil per tree. On average, they’ll get about 4,000 liters—8,000 bottles— of extra virgin olive oil from their grove. By contrast, in the South of Italy, yields can be over 400 pounds per tree. The bigger Southern yields are the product of warmer temperatures, which let the olive trees—and the types of olives they produce—grow to be bigger. By the time you get as far north as Tuscany, the occasional hard frost every 30 years or so kills off most trees before they get to be so large. (By the way, the last hard frost in Tuscany was in 1985—so the next one is statistically due to happen any time now.)

If they could many Tuscan landowners would chop down their olive groves to plant vineyards. The wine they produce—especially in more famous regions like Chianti, where Castello di Cacchiano is located—is a real breadwinner. But since it’s illegal to remove the olive trees, they keep on producing oil each year, and we get to reap the benefits.

Olives ripen and are harvested in fall.

The olive harvest runs from October to December. Unripe olives are green, ripe ones are black. In Tuscany they pick them just as they start to ripen. They’re pressed into oil right away, usually the same day. The fresh oil is stored in casks for a few months to let any leftover bits of olives or other sediment sink to the bottom. That way, when Cacchiano olive oil is bottled in the spring, they can do so without filtering it. That makes the flavor more powerful.

Just like different vintages of wine vary, olive oils are different from year to year based on weather and other changing conditions. But unlike wine olive oil does not get better with age. Fresher olive oil has bolder, more vibrant flavors. As olive oil ages, it mellows. After a few years it will go rancid. But you’ll be done with your bottle long before that happens so there’s no need to worry.

We get our first shipment of the new oil each year in May, imported directly from Tuscany. The day they arrive is a little like olive oil Christmas morning: we know what we asked for but we don’t know exactly what we’re going to get. We can’t wait to open the boxes and find out.

Cacchiano olive oil is powerful.

We crack open a bottle as soon as our container is unloaded. Cacchiano’s aroma is usually incredibly grassy. Someone once described it as “fresh cut lawns on a suburban Sunday.” It has bitter notes, like unripe walnuts and green bananas. At the end there’s a slow-building, strong, peppery kick that tingles down your throat long after you finish.

Oils from different places have different flavors. There are all sorts of reasons for that, including the type of olives grown, the ripeness when they’re picked, and the way they are handled when they’re turned into oil. Different regions tend to favor different qualities. Oils from Liguria in Northern Italy are appreciated for their delicate flavors that make them great for making pesto or pouring on fish (Liguria being the Italian riviera). In Provence in Southern France, olives are often left to ferment a bit before pressing them in order to develop a rich, buttery flavor in the oil. In Tuscany, bold, peppery flavors are king.

Cook up a taste of Tuscany at home with five classic Tuscan dishes.

1. Fettunta: toasted bread with plenty of olive oil poured on top. Think bruschetta without the tomatoes.
2. Panzanella: leftover bread tossed with tomatoes and other vegetables, then soaked with good vinegar and olive oil.
3. Zuppa di fagioli alla Toscana: thick soup made of beans, salt, pepper, garlic, and a hefty glug of olive oil.
4. Pasta al pomodoro: pasta cooked al dente, then tossed with a generous amount olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, and basil.
5. Bistecca alla Fiorentina: grilled T-bone steak served with olive oil and a squeeze of lemon.

As a very flexible rule, extra virgin olive oil can be stored for about a year. It likely will not go rancid after a year, but the flavors will mellow as the oil matures. There’s often a best by date on the bottle that is usually 1-2 years after it has been bottled.

What’s the best way to store olive oil?

Keep it in a relatively cool, dark place. Heat and light are enemies, so keep it away from window sills and stove sides. There’s no need to refrigerate, in fact, we recommend you avoid it.

When can I expect the next season’s olive oils to arrive?

Most of our olive oils come from the Northern Hemisphere, so the olives are harvested in the fall. The pressing and bottling happens in the fall or early winter. For any oils that aren’t produced in the United States, we’ll then wait for them to slowly make their voyage across the ocean to us. Keep an eye out for new harvest oils to be on our shelves by late spring or early summer.

Light & Elegant

The most delicate oils. For an olive oil novice, this is where I recommend starting. These oils are often made near the seaside, which makes them a perfect match with baked fish.

Buttery & Silky

Lovely, rich, smooth oils – without any bite. If you want to taste the fruity parts of the olive without the peppery kick getting in the way, here’s the place to look. Good as a substitute for butter or when you want to play up the sweetness of an oil.

Smooth & Assertive

Intense oils, but not over the top. These have loads of flavor but not as much spicy kick as some others. In my opinion, these are the best all-around oils for pasta, dipping bread, and more.

Rustic & Fruity

The most intense oils. Loads of grassy flavor with a peppery, spicy kick. Use these alongside bold foods, like drizzled over grilled steaks or vegetables.

Why does one olive oil taste different than another? There’s a few key factors that impact flavor:

1. Olive varietal

Just like wine made with Chardonnay grapes tastes different than wine made from Merlot grapes, olive oils made from different types of olives can have totally different flavors. There are thousands of different olives in the world. Some are milder. Some are more bitter. Some are more buttery. Each will imparts its own flavor when pressed for its oil.

2. Harvesting and production

Olives ripen in the fall. They all start green. If you leave them on the tree long enough they will all turn black. If you want a pepperier, grassier tasting oil, it’s better to look for one that was harvested earlier in the season when the olives were greener. If you’re looking for a richer, more buttery oil, you’re better off looking for one harvested later in the season when the olives were blacker. Not all olives ripen at the same time, so an oil maker looks for a certain mix of ripeness on the trees – green, brown, purple, black – before picking.

Generally, the best oils are pressed just hours after picking, while poorer quality, less flavorful oils may take longer and be treated less carefully. There’s one significant exception, however. In southern France, a few producers still use a traditional method where the olives are intentionally left to sit for a few days to ferment before pressing, creating deep black olive flavor and rich, buttery textures.

3. Region

Around the Mediterranean, olives have been pressed to make oil for thousands of years. Different regions have developed their own particular takes on oil. Many regions have unique olives found nowhere else, like the bold Coratina that’s widespread only in Puglia. Different regions can also have different standards for how ripe the olives should be when harvested, or how to handle the olives after picking. Since these traditional varietals and methods are often quite localized, knowing where a Mediterranean olive oil comes from can often be a shorthand into predicting what it will taste like.

Annual weather patterns matter too. Having a hotter, drier summer can make for a more intensely flavored oil; rain during the autumn harvest may water the flavors down. The only way to truly know what each year’s harvest is like is to taste. At Zingerman’s, we do that step for you! Each year we taste all the new harvest oils and update our tasting notes for each oil.

“Extra virgin” is a legal term used to categorize olive oil. It’s like the USDA ratings for beef: Prime, Choice, and Select. For olive oil, the standards are set by the IOC, or International Olive Council, an organization set up by the UN to coordinate and promote olive and olive oil production.

Just like the USDA beef ratings, the IOC specifies a hierarchy for olive oils. From highest to lowest quality, the rankings are: extra virgin olive oil, virgin olive oil, and ordinary olive oil (on labels, it’s usually just called “Olive Oil,” or sometimes “Pure Olive Oil”). There are additional lower rankings of olive oils that aren’t for consumption, just like how beef that ranks lower than “Select” still gets used for other products, like dog food.

There’s a three part test for extra virginity: how it’s made, its chemical composition, and how it tastes.

First, extra virgin olive oil, virgin olive oil, and ordinary olive oil must all be made only from olives, and processed only by mechanical means (which is to say, no chemicals can be used). These might seem like no-brainers, but since ancient Roman and Greek times and continuing to today, conniving oil salesmen cut good olive oil with cheaper oils, like sunflower oil or heavily chemically refined olive oil, to boost their profit margins.

Secondly, extra virgin olive oil must have less than 0.8% oleic acid, which, counterintuitively, is the name for a type of fat, not an acid like vinegar. Oleic acid occurs naturally in olives and many other vegetable and animal fats. As olive oil oxidizes—which is a technical way of saying, as olive oil goes rancid—the amount of oleic acid increases. In other words, an extra virgin olive oil must be less than 0.8% rancid. Virgin olive oil must have between 0.8-2% oleic acid. Ordinary olive oil is between 2-3.3% oleic acid.

What makes for more oleic acid? One big factor is how the olives are handled. Like apples, olives will bruise if they get bumped around. And just like how an apple that falls to the floor is probably still pretty good if you eat it immediately but develops a big, mushy brown spot if you let it sit for a few days, a bruised olive gets worse the longer it sits around, too. To produce olive oils with low oleic acid (and also ones that taste great), it’s best to handle the olives gently and get them to the mill as quickly as possible. After pressing, the oil should be stored away from light and oxygen, both of which will oxidize it (and thus create more oleic acid) over time.

Third, extra virgin olive oil must meet certain flavor standards. First, it should taste “fruity,” which, as the IOC uses it, means that it should taste like olives. The IOC also considers bitterness and pepperiness to be positive flavor attributes for oils. Secondly, an extra virgin oil must not have any flavor defects. In particular, it should not taste muddy, winey, or rancid, each of which indicates poor handling of the olives. Virgin and ordinary olive oils are also supposed to taste fruity, but they’re allowed to have some flavor defects.

Does “extra virgin” mean the oil is good?

In a word, no. It does mean in most cases it should be better than oils labeled as virgin or just plain olive oil, but there’s an enormous range in quality of oils labeled as “extra virgin.” What’s more, thanks to the alleged widespread adulteration and corruption in the big olive oil industry, a vast proportion of what’s labeled as “extra virgin” doesn’t truly meet the IOC’s standards. For a deeper look into olive oil fraud, check out Tom Mueller’s fascinating book, Extra Virginity.

So how do you buy a good oil? Oils from smaller producers—especially those grown and pressed on a single estate (which is the case for practically every oil we sell)—are much less likely to be tampered with. But the best advice I can give you is to taste it. If an oil tastes good to you, and gives good flavors to the foods you eat with it, then it’s good.