Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - Is Expensive Olive Oil Worth It? How to Find the Best in Italy

Episode Date: July 27, 2018

“That olive oil costs how MUCH? Why would I spend $15 when I can spend $4?” You’ve likely said this to yourself at some point. So what’s the difference between expensive olive oil versus the cheap stuff? Does it really matter? Toni Mazzaglia, founder of the food tour company Taste Florence came on the Postcard Academy podcast to explain how to find the best olive oil, when you should use it, and when you definitely should not. (visit postcardacademy.co for your check list on how to identify quality olive oil)   Like this podcast? Please vote for Postcard Academy for a Podcast Award Voting is open for the Annual Podcast Awards. The Postcard Academy is nominated in the Society and People’s Choice categories. It would mean the world to me if you’d go to podcastawards.com and vote for Postcard Academy. Thank you so much for taking a moment to do this! And thank you for listening to this show. I know you’re busy and have many listening options, so it means a lot to me that you’re here. You are the best.   This podcast is brought to you by Audible. Not a member yet? Postcard Academy listeners can get a FREE audiobook and a 30-day free trial if you sign up via audibletrial.com/postcardDo you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to the Postcard Academy, your weekly travel and culture podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Mikital. Have you ever been in Italy or in a gourmet food shop anywhere and wondered why is this olive oil so expensive? Same goes for balsamic vinegar. Well, today we will be talking about what makes these products so special, what to look for on the label to make sure you're buying something quality, and why great olive oil and balsamic vinegar is worth the price. will also share when you should not use the good olive oil and what you should use instead. I am continuing my conversation with my friend Tony Matsalia, who in the last episode shared all of the wonderful places where you should eat and hang out while you're visiting Florence. Tony, as you may recall, is an American who enjoys the Italian lifestyle so much

as she moved to Tuscany and opened the food to her company, Taste Florence. We're jumping back into our conversation where I ask, What makes a good bottle of olive oil? But first, a reminder that voting is still open for the annual podcast awards. The Postcard Academy is nominated in the Society and People's Choice Categories. If you've already voted, thank you so much. And if you haven't had time yet, it would really make my day if you went to podcastawards.com and voted for Postcard Academy.

That's in the Society and People's Choice Categories. I will include a link in the show notes. Thank you so much. This podcast is brought to you by Audible. Not a member yet? you Postcard Academy listeners can get a free audiobook and a 30-day free trial if you sign up at audible trial.com slash postcard. Can we go on a little tangent of olive oil?

Yeah. Okay. I know that you should always use extra virgin olive oil and that cold press is pretty meaningless. Can you explain what we should look out for if we want to buy a quality olive oil and when we need to use quality and when we can like use just something a little bit more generic. Good question. The first thing about olive oil is it does not matter how good the oil is. If it's old, it's no longer good. So even if you buy a really good olive oil, if it's from three

years ago, you don't want that oil. So the first rule is try to always buy oil that is less than a year old, the younger the better. And especially when you're looking for oil from Tuscany, Umbria, these areas, we make our oil. I shouldn't say just here, because down in the South, they're making a lot more of these high-quality early harvest oils. It's just that the Tuscans like to think we're the only ones making them. So what I should say is, first of all, look at the harvest. Most oils, like 90, 95 percent of oils, don't have the harvest date. it just says kind of like a vague, like, you know, season it might have been picked. And it says when it expires, that's already not a good sign.

So if you can avoid that, avoid that. And to avoid that, if you're in, you know, I'm saying the states, but if you're elsewhere looking at Italian oil, it's going to be harder because it's going to be expensive. So my first tip is look for the date, if you can find it, and you want to look for the word racolta. Recolta means when it's picked. or frangitura means when it's pressed. Either way, the picking and the pressing for a good extraversion

have to happen within 24 hours. So whether it says recalta or frangitura or pressing, all three of those are what you want to look for. And then you want to think, okay, the olives are, they're picked and pressed in most of Tuscany and Umbria, this oil that we're looking for in this case. They're picked and pressed usually, let's say, late October or mid-November.

because then we get an early frost and we don't want to lose the olive. So we have to pick them out of the tree. So they're an early harvest, extra virgin. And so if I know that they're making them, let's just say, for argument's sake, in between Halloween and Thanksgiving, then I want to ask myself, what year was the last Thanksgiving? Okay, it was 2017 right now. So I don't want an oil from 2016, and I can't get an oil from 2018 yet. So I'm going to get a 2017.

So the lower quality oils, they're waiting too long, right? Because if the olives are too ripe, they produce more oil. So you'll get a sort of lower quality oil. Yeah, there's a couple of things happening. It's not just when they're harvested. It's also lower quality oil. You don't, you know, you don't always get a guarantee. And unfortunately, there's so much to talk about with labeling. I can't explain all of it. But some olive oil just says product of Italy, which means that the olives could come from all over Italy and be combined. Sometimes it just says pressed in Italy, and that means that they actually get all of some, you know, all over the place, other countries even, and press them and then bobbed them in Italy. So there's a lot of stuff that you don't want. The best way to know what you're getting is to try to find there's two categories for food that in theory, because we are in Italy and people find a way to break rules. But in theory, are protecting you as a consumer. And those are IGP, which stands for Indications Geographica Proteta, and D.E. So both of those IGP, DOP, DOP, and then you would want to look for if it says either of those, and it's going to say where the oil came from. So either it'll say Tuscan, IGP is either going to say Tuscan or Umbrian or Sicilian, whatever, a region, a general region.

DOP would even be more specific. So it could be Kianti. There's, you know, or it could be Montalcino, for example, or it's going to be a more specific, smaller place on the DOP. So either way, DOP or IGP are ways of knowing exactly where your oil is coming from. And then if it says IGP or DOP, I can guarantee you it's an extra virgin because no one's going to spend the money on licensing and controls and blah, blah, blah, taxes and all that stuff to do an IGP or DOP if they're making a bad oil. So look for IGP, DOP, see where it came from, which you'll have to be clearly labeled on the label. And then,

make sure it's not old. And then at that point, remember to use it and not leave it sitting around. You don't want to leave it out where there's bright light or heat. So even though I do not like bending over to get things out from under the cabinet, I hate it. You kind of have to do it with oil. You can't leave your oil next to the stove because every time you turn your stove on, you're heating up that oil because it's very close to the stove. So if you keep it out on the counter, keep it in a dark corner away from any kind of appliance on the counter. So it's like kind of ergonomic.

At least you don't have to bend over for it. But don't keep it next to the stove as ergonomic and easy as that would be. That is a great tip. I bet a lot of us are not thinking about that. Yeah, I mean, I'm guilty of it. Like I've got, I'm saying it to you and I'm looking right now and my oil, I don't keep all my oil in it. I keep just a small portion of my oil and like this beautiful ceramic corer. And it's about six inches away from my stove.

right now, but I try to, when I turn my stove on, I try to move it away from the stove. It always migrates way back over there, though. And I think acidity is supposed to be close to zero? So acidity has to be less than 0.8% of fatty acids, 0.8 for it to be extraversion. That's one, it's not the only thing that makes it extraversion, but chemically speaking, that's like an easy gauge to look at. So another thing is, is when you buy oil, it's very rare that they give you the acidity percentage on the bottle.

So that's just something that if you buy an extra virgin, then by law, it should be less than 0.8% of fatty acids. What does that even mean? Kind of going back to answer your question from before, I want you to think of an olive, kind of like an apple, and think of, you know,

if you take an apple off the tree, if it isn't ripe, it doesn't have much juice, and you don't have much sugar in the little juice that's in there, right? So the same thing would happen with an unripened olive, which is what we use here in Tuscany and Umbria, there's not much oil in an unripened olive,

and in that oil there aren't many fatty acids, many lipids. So those are the acids we're talking about. So a higher quality oil has less fatty acids, less lipid. So that cutoff line is 0.8% for extroversion. But if you get a really good early harvest extraversion, like the ones we're talking about from Tuscany and Umbria, where they pick the olives out of the tree because they have to, because otherwise we would lose the olives when it gets cold out.

Those early harvest ones will have sometimes as little as a fourth of a loud amount. So because they're lower in fatty acids, which are the lipids, they're not even really meant for cooking. They're meant for, I'm just drizzling on things. Now, the locals and some people will argue about that. Some people are like, I use it to cook anyway and I don't care what you say, and studies have said it's great. but chemically speaking, the lower fatty acids, and I'm not a chemist, but I've been told by many people that I've dated in an agronomal, I did a winemaker that made his own oil.

They all told me the same thing, which is don't use this good early harvest oil for high heat. You can use it for light sauteing, especially if you prefer the flavor. But it's kind of a waste to do that because when you heat it up, because the lipids are so low, you actually change the chemical makeup of the liquid. lipids and you turn the good fats into bad fats very quickly when you heat up good oil. And the good oil is expensive. So yeah, it's good to... And it's expensive. So like, for example, I, you know, I for quite a while, I dated a winemaker. He made wine. He made olive oil. I helped pick olives with him. When we would go and make the oil, you know, every year you make it around Halloween, Thanksgiving, basically you go pick the olives,

you comb them or pluck them or even like kind of shuck them out of the tree. And you have a net down because otherwise you had to pick them one by one, take forever, right? So then you gather them out of the net and you bring them to the olive oil press. And it's amazing because the olive oil press could be open all night because not everybody has a press

since you only use it once a year. It's not lucrative to have presses for everybody. So there's kind of like shared presses and everybody has their time slot. And sometimes your time slots is three in the morning. So you pick your olives, you go at three in the morning. They put the olives in. They get rins, the stems and things,

get taken out with a machine, then it gets pressed into kind of like a paste, and then that paste gets pressed to extract the oil. So when we talk about the first press, the first press is the first time you extract oil from that paste that you just made. And cold press is better because you're not heating up the oil. So you're not changing the quality of the oil. But a truly cold press is hard to find. So even the parameters of what that means are kind of shady. So that's why I say first cold press, it's not the end-all be-all of what it is to be extra virgin. It is important, but that's not what makes it extra virgin. Okay.

Okay. Oh, I know what I wanted to say definitely is that. So we go and we press that oil. And the fun part is you bring like a loaf of warm bread with you. And as the oil is coming out, you just like hold the warm bread under the spout of bright green oil. And it's the best thing ever. Oh, my gosh. Oh, yeah.

Like, yeah, the next time you come, you need to be here. in October-ish, because you will freak out. It's so good. So basically, we make the oil, but as soon as we make the new oil, usually you still have some oil left over from last year. And oil, as it gets older, I'm not sure what happens to it chemically as far as the fats, but it does change. It gets less green in flavor and color.

And so what the locals do, and I don't know if it's a proper thing to do chemically or not, but once they've made the new oil, they use the new oil, like I mentioned, for drizzling and dressing and things like that, putting on steak, on salad, on soup, and the old oil they start to cook with, because otherwise it's going to go bad anyway. All right. Now we know how to identify good old. What we shouldn't be cooking with. Was there a place in the market that you would recommend by oil? There are a couple places.

I love Daisy. Here's another place that doesn't have a name on the shop, right? But it's kind of near the staircase. She's this little teeny tiny shop. and I mean unfortunately like everything kind of looks the same in the market if you if you're there the first time it's a little tiny shop it's kind of got like wood lining and she has cheeses and she has great oil hers is not IGP or DOP even though it actually is IGP she told me but they they had to choose whether to do IGP or certified organic to pay for the taxation

on both was just like not lucrative so they decided to go with organic because it's another that's another good thing to look for. So her oil says the production date, and it says certified organic. It has a little organic symbol on it. And it's from, let me say, I just happen to have some right here. Let's see.

It is from Terra Nova Braccellini, which is part of Arezzo. So she's still here in Tuscany. Okay. Yeah, Stacey is lovely. I bought some honey from her. So I'll put a photo of her on the website.

people can identify who she is if they want to go and buy some, like, cheese or boil or honey from her. I'm smelling the oil right now, and it's like, it smells so good. A little interlude while Tony has a copping attack. You'll be very intrigued at what she uses to cure it. Actually, we will tell you right now. Oh, you know what I'm going to do? What? I'm going to take a sip of balsamic vinegar.

And then you can explain how that could be medicinal. Okay. You know, I love that. Okay. You know, I like live with Halstamink Finner. Oh, man. Yeah, you got to come back and we have to go there, too. Okay. Sorry, I'm not going through my... I'm giving out the 40-year-old balsamic.

Going where? To Modena? Yeah, we got to go to Maldana. Okay. Oh, can we please go to that restaurant that's, like, all over the math these days? I can't know. Oh, the Franchis, the Osirio Francescana? I need to go there.

It's hard to get a spot, but I have a friend that knows them. I can't promise we'll go there, but I can promise you that the two places I will take you will blow your mind. Okay. You're making me really excited about the autumn because I'm a summer baby. And right now I'm in my prime and I always get a little bit depressed when, even though the fall is a great time to vacation, maybe the best, like, weather-wise and stuff. Yeah. I always get sad when summer ends. So now I'm excited.

When's your birthday? August. Uh-huh. Would that make you a Leo? Yes. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah.

When is your birthday? People can say what they want, but I believe it in this up. When is the day? I am in Aries. I'm March 30th. Okay. And I love a Leo. You guys are great.

Thank you. Good for French. Not so good for dating. For me, you know. I guess. Have you ever seen Aries? What? I don't know.

I can't recall. March? I don't know. I wouldn't, yeah, I don't want to lose other people from my fanship. I don't want to date me. Let's put it that way. Wait, so you were just coughing and took a sip of balsamic. What is, yeah, what is the, like, miracle work of balsamic? So, again, can you hear how much better my voices? I should have just been sipping on balsamic this whole time. balsamic has natural healing qualities that come from the tannins and the different antioxidants as a result from aging it for over 12 years because real balsamic vinegar is not a wine

vinegar. It is basically a vinegar made with grape moss, the juice of the grapes, that goes through acidic fermentation over a minimum of 12 years and reduces in barrels. And the different barrels give off the antioxidants, the flavor, the color. And so real balsamic vinegar They've been making it for over a thousand years As a balsam As you can see it only work for about a minute though

As a balsam for upset stomachs and sore throats and things like that Well and we tried a white was it a white one Yeah that was not a traditional balsamic That was what's called a white balsamic condiment And that one has wine vinegar in it So I have you guys try usually two or three or four different types. And we end with the real one, the good one.

Wow, this one that I just had has like an aftertaste of chocolate. It's like amazing to me. So what we start with, kind of like you do a wine tasting. You might have like a table wine and then a really good wine and then like the top of the notch, top, top, top, reserve wine. So that's what we did with the balsamic. So we had basically like the equivalent of a table wine but a balsamic, which was the white balsamic condom.

which was still really good. It's just not the traditional. It's nothing to do with the traditional. It's just kind of trendy right now. I was surprised by it though because I had never tried that when I kind of avoided it. Because to be honest with you, I'm not that into vinegar, but this is just like a whole other league, even though it's not the traditional really rich stuff that you would put on like Parmesan.

It was so light and tasty. And I would actually put it on a salad, which is before I tried it, I would definitely would have not given it a chance. Yeah, I mean, I was skeptical about it too when it first came out. I had a guest asked me and like, I would say maybe a year after I started doing tours, they were like, what about white balsamic? And I was like, white balsamic, sh white balsamic? You know, I was like, ah, my gut, like I said.

I'm like a cratsy old man. So I was like, well, I guess I should try this stuff, you know? And then I tried a couple and some were crap and some were really good. And the one that they have at the wine shop that we go to is so good. I'm hooked on it. I probably buy a bottle a month. And I give it as gifts. People love it as a gift.

It's great because it's like under 20 euro. And it makes people happy. And it's so good on salad and heirloom tomatoes and grilled vegetables and fresh fruit. It's so good on peaches and stuff. Oh my gosh. It's so good. What was the brand? The brand, it's bottled for the wine shop.

So it's a lessee. like if you go on there actually they're out of it right now they run out of it all the time because everybody always buys it on the tour but which i don't know if you notice like i don't really give a lot of time for shopping um but somehow people still manage to like squeeze in five minutes to buy that white balsamic like almost every day because it's that good so did you get any that day yes i think i did i'm trying i think yeah i think you did yeah i think you're like i don't care if i have to carry this around i'm getting it i have um so right now i'm in seri and I only brought like a tiny little carry-on because I was sick of logging my great big gray

suitcase around the world. And so I think I bought some of that. If I did, it's in London at my front house and I'm going to go pick it up a week. Okay. You know what would be interesting because I know that they make, I mean, every country has some kind of vinegar or some kind of cooked grape must or whatever. It would be interesting to see if they have anything like that there. Do they have any, like when you eat salad there, what does it have on it? In London? No, no, and Sarajevo. Oh, I haven't ordered a salad here, but that's some homework for me. I will go have a salad today, and then I'll let you know.

Because you know what I mean? Like, whenever you go to a country, what they put on the salads is a lot about the country. Like, when I first came here and there was no salad dressing, because I'm sure you remember the same thing. Like, what? You know, you make your own salad dressing here, oil and vinegar or oil and lemon or whatever, and it took me a while to get used to. And now I can't do anything. Like now I can't even think about eating bottled, you know, bottled salad dressing back in the States and stuff.

But it's curious because, like, you know, I think when I was in Scotland, they take salad dressing to a whole other level of wrong. Bottle of like called salad cream. Yeah, exactly. It's like secret sauce. I don't like it. No, I'd be curious. I was in, just a random aside, I was in Macedonia last week, or like, I don't know, two weeks ago. And I was staying at an Airbnb with this really lovely girl named Sophia.

She's the best. But she was putting ketchup on her pasta. What are you doing? I thought that was like a British thing. And she's like, no, we always put ketchup on our pasta. And I was just like, I don't even know if I've seen this in real life. I thought this was... I had heard tales of this, but I didn't want to believe.

Yeah, apparently a lot of countries do it. I had a friend, a very good friend in Wilmington, who's not from North Carolina for the record. I'm not going to say where she's from, but not from North Carolina. And I caught her putting ketchup on her pasta and quickly remedied it. But I just saw on Netflix there's a show called Rita. Uh-huh. And it's, I don't, I think it's in Finland.

I can't remember because it's all dubbed into Italian, but she puts ketchup on her pasta too. So it happens all over the place. I didn't know. All right. We're going to have to have an episode on like sauce making. Yeah. Well, what I was thinking is, oh, man, I had a great idea before and I already, I already forgot. But I think when you come back, we should do, like, like, you've done some of your recordings

where you're with the person, but from somewhere cool. Yeah. Do you ever do repeat? Repeat people? My friend Krinkle and I. Okay, cool. We can do whatever we want in this show. I love it.

And yeah, I mean, originally I was just interviewing expats, but then I was like, you know, I don't really think I need to limit myself. I just want to talk to cool people and whether, I mean, I'm very much interested in expat stories because I think it's great to encourage others to like go out and see the world. But then it's fun to interview locals as well. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a combination. And I've learned a lot from the ones I've listened to you. I listened to the one from Sarajevo. She sounds

so adorable. Oh, that one Macedonia? Oh, yeah, I'm sorry, from Macedonia. Seriaoba will be coming up in the future. Yeah, you're in Sarajevo right now. So she just sounded so nice. I don't know if I should have outed her ketchup eating. All right, Tony, I don't want to take up more of your time. I'm going to come back so we can have some fresh-pressed olive oil on hot bread.

Sagra, all of that time. Yes, absolutely. It's always so fun talking to Tony. We actually spoke for several hours, and in the third and final installment of our most recent conversation, we will be talking about Italian wines and what and where you should be drinking while you're in Tuscany. You can sample some of these fantastic wines yourself if you go on Tony's Taste Florence Food Tour, and you can get 5% off with the code Postcard 18.

I hope you found today's episode useful. Visit postcardacademy.com for your free checklist on how to buy the best quality olive oil. One more reminder about the podcast awards. If you like this podcast, please vote for the Postcard Academy in the society and people's choice categories. Thank you so much. That's all for now. Thanks for listening and have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot?

I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.