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Fruity, a Little Bitter and Spicy By Simon Field

Simon Field is the founder of International Extra Virgin Olive Oil Savantes and an olive producer and trader.

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Clearing out some dusty books I came across a 2011 publication sponsored by the European Union and Spain entitled ‘The surprisingly, marvellous, savoury, curious, healthy, historic, artistic and fantastic world of Olive Oil’. It is a beautiful informative book. The first significant pictorial of food comes on the 27th page. The preceding pages are full of production data, varietals, mythology, olive oil classifications and pictures of the olive groves of Spain stretching to the horizon.

The question is; does it sell olive oil to the consumer or is it a little self-indulgent, trying to satisfy those who paid for it first, the publisher, the producer organisations, the politicians and secondly persuade, incidentally, consumers? Is it trying to portray each of the facets described in the title? I am sure it has made money for the graphic artists, the designers, the authors and the administrators – I question the return to producers? My observation is that in the last 10 years since the publication of this book our narrative has not changed.

We hear endlessly of the Mediterranean diet pyramid in the context of olive oil sales.  Analysis of Google Trends in the USA shows that a slight upward trend in searches on the Diet does not seem to lead to increased searches for olive oil.

There are many reasons given for the current oversupply of olive oil around the world – tariffs, trade agreements, loss of consumer confidence and the ubiquitous absence of educated consumers. Most of these are out of the control of the producers.

Contributing to this oversupply is declining or stagnant consumption in the main consuming countries – Spain, Italy, Greece and the USA.

There is one consideration which we observe in tasting extra virgin olive oils in Savantes programmes which does not get much attention. That is the question of whether the drive for quality defined by chemical parameters is producing a robust and bitter style and flavour of extra virgin olive oil which consumers do not like.