Earlier this month, we ran this article on the mob selling you counterfeit trash, including olive oil. In December alone, authorities confiscated 7,000 tons of counterfeit olive oil set for export. Most alarmingly, a study by the University of California showed that as much as 69% of imported European olive oil sold as extra virgin in the delicatessens and grocery stores across the world wasn’t what it claimed to be.
The thing is, good olive oil is difficult, time-consuming and expensive to make, but easy, quick and cheap to doctor. So how do we solve this problem?
Dr. Oz recently suggested that you can determine whether your olive oil is pure by putting it in the fridge. If it gets cloudy, you’re all set.
If you don’t want to waste your time on tests, buying locally is also a good practice when you have the option and in South Africa we have more than enough olive producers who needs your support.
Let’s take the olive oil from a small boutique winery in Stellenbosch as an example.
De Boerin extra virgin olive oil, produced by Kleinood, has been cold pressed. This means that the extraction process of the oil from the olive took place at 27 degrees or lower. You are therefore getting all the beneficial nutrients and antioxidants that may have been stripped out when oil is processed at a higher temperature.
If an olive oil is cheaper than about R150 per liter, it may have been mixed with lower quality oils. You see, making olive oil is an expensive business, and there’s a certain minimum cost to mauling trees, harvesting, and mechanically squeezing oil out of the fruit. Most other oils are extracted chemically from their respective crop. This is not the case at Kleinood. All olives are hand harvested from carefully selected Italian varieties. The good news is that a bottle of De Boeren Extra Virgin is still affordable at R93 for a 500ml bottle.
The date of bottling and the number of each individual bottle appear on the back label. This is a good thing because unlike wine, olive oil does not get better with age and have a shelf life of about 6 months once opened.
Another sign that De Boeren is a good option to invest in is the dark bottle in comes in. The three things that cause olive oil to go rancid are light, heat, and oxygen. If the olive oil you are buying is in a clear glass bottle, that’s not as good as a dark glass bottle.
By tending to the trees and the blending process with equal attention to detail, De Boeren Extra Virgin Oil is blended to an oil that is ample, full and silky in the mouth. These qualities make De Boerin an excellent oil to enjoy with a fresh summer salad and it’s also proudly South African!
