Olive oil – a living essence, good for you inside and outside!
We certainly didn’t discover about the vastly beneficial aspects of olive oil in recent times. Records of interesting uses of olive (as a treatment for stomach ache, as preventitive medicine against ulcers, for shiny and healthy hair) date way back to Ancient Greek sources. More accurate perhaps is that recent times we have maybe forgotten the wonders of this splendid green fruit, in the face of mass production and wonder-chemicals.
Our modern day analysis of olive oil of course, means that we can literally break it down into its single components and understand which each single molecular type is responsible for which property and thus concentrate our production on enhancing those aspects. But we should never for a moment lose sight of the product as a whole.
Recently an interesting project has been developed, going under the name of Progetto Oleosalusistema, run by an agricultural business Cesare Buonamici, in conjunction with l’Università di Firenze, Metropoli della CCIAA di Firenze, la Toscana Enologica Mori and l’Associazione di Assaggiatori Anapoo. The project is based on a single concept; olive oil is not the mere mechanical extraction of the oil from fruit, but it is a living substance subject to a whole host of chemical and bio-chemical transformations, all of which affect the product drastically.
Just think, that at any single moment, olive oil is rich in yeasts, healthy bacterias and other micro-organisms, but in a constant state of flux, due to temperature, light and the presence of oxyen in the air. These factors enormously changes both the perfume and the flavour of the oil in question.
We are still a long way from really understanding all the processes. For example we know that the yeast levels at the moment of pressing are low, yet at the moment of bottling they are considerably higher. Something occurs during the trasformation from fruit to oil that we have yet to learn about. In the future it could be that each frantoio (pressing mill) actually selects the microbiotic environment for the process, thus effectively being able to diversify taste and perfume of the oils.
Whoever would have thought that we still have so much to discover about this centuries-old Mediterreanean staple!
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