In this special Encore Episode, we dive deep into world of Olive Oil, led by the incredible Liz Tagami. She's a 6th generation Californian, who has been involved in defining and nurturing the Lucero Olive Oil brand for over 16 years. She’s a specialty food and cooking equipment industry veteran with 4 decades of international business experience. She and her husband, Donald, now own the Lucero brand and American Olive Farmer website and marketplace for all things olive oil related!

We talk about:

• How a good olive oil can significantly benefit your health
• That the mediterranean diet is all about enjoying leisurely meals with loved ones while savoring delicious food and wine.
• What is Extra virgin olive oil (really), and how it's defined
• How properly storing olive oil is crucial to maintaining its freshness and health benefits over time.

Visit American Olive Farmer Here and use code SIPWITHNIKKI for $10 off your order!

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Purchase the Juicy and jumping from the glass Sollevato Sangiovese that made Liz’s would be socks roll up and down! And for a limited time you'll see a bundle with 2 bottles of Sangiovese and one bottle of Olio Novello.

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Questions? Comments? nikki@sipwithnikki.com

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We know it's almost an embarrassment of riches, what a good olive oil can do for you because you talk about diabetes and cholesterol and high blood pressure and dementia. But the European culture where you are enjoying leisurely meals with people you love with a glass of wine has such wisdom embedded into it.

The Mediterranean diet isn't just these quote unquote superfoods. The Mediterranean diet is about the pleasure.

Hey there. Welcome to Sip with Nikki. I'm Nikki Lamberti coming to you from Sonoma County, California.

And I have to give extra love to all of my regular listeners. So great to have you back again. And if you are a new listener and you've stumbled upon us or someone told you you have to listen to this, good job.

Happy you're here. Welcome to the party. So this week I am re releasing digitally remastered because I'm much better at audio editing than I used to be.

Two episodes that came out, I can't believe this, almost a year ago.

So if you have been listening for that long or you have scrolled all the way back into our catalog of almost 60 episodes now, you probably found Olive Oil 101 and 102, two separate episodes. So I was lucky enough to be introduced to Liz Tagami of Lucero Olive Oil and American Olive Farmer. From my friend Hobie.

Again, if you are a listener, you know Dr. Hobie Wedler, Ph.D. in organic chemistry. Dear friend of mine has made an appearance in multiple episodes.

And years ago, when Michael and I started Solovato, our wine brand, and we're figuring out what we wanted to do with it, we had the dream to one day have our own olive oil as part of our portfolio. And while that dream is still percolating and hasn't happened yet, I was introduced to Liz because she is an olive oil consultant.

She and I have a lot in common because she left the corporate world when she stumbled upon something that she was extremely passionate about and that was not only food and beverage, but specifically olive oil.

And basically that was an international brokerage for food and wine with a focus on one of my favorites, extra virgin olive oil from all different growing areas around the world.

She has been a panelist for judging olive oil competitions all over the world and teaching master classes and tasting classes on what is the right way to taste and what are you looking for?

And now she and her husband Donald are up in Corning, California, which is part of the Sacramento Valley and they own and operate American Olive Farmer, which if you listen to the podcast that might sound familiar, they are our sponsor and you'll hear an ad for them in our episodes.

Because I am a huge fan, huge supporter, and I consume a lot of their olive oil, which I consider to be one of the best olive oils here in California. And we have a lot of great oil here in California.

So I have re edited and pulled together the highlights of both of those 101 and 102 episodes because there was a lot there. And giving you the Cliff Notes here, which includes quite a few listener questions that had been sent in.

You'll hear Liz weigh in on topics like extra virgin. What does it mean? Is it important? What does cold pressed mean? Should I be looking for that? What's the proper way to store my oil and for how long?

Are there really health benefits of olives and olive oil? And what's the right way to taste? What am I looking for?

And what is also available and I'm so excited about this, is their Olio Novello, which is the new oil from the most recent harvest just this past winter. And Liz refers to it as the Beaujolais Nouveau of oil.

So if you've been around and you've heard my episodes about Bourjolais, I think that's a great parallel. It's young, it's fresh, and it is absolutely gorgeous.

Michael and I have made a significant dent in the bottle that we opened for last week's podcast episode. If you heard that talking all about Sangiovese and we actually recorded ourselves tasting this oil. So you can hop into that episode for more detail.

But I will just tell you we can't stop just dipping focaccia bread, sourdough bread, any bread in there. The Olio Novello is light and fresh.

It's pale in color, it has a very subtle bitterness, but it is just like sunshine in a glass with a silky, buttery texture. Oh my gosh, you need to get some now.

So grab that specially priced bundle with two bottles of our wine and a bottle of this oil and experience the joy is all about. I'm so excited to now be able to offer you bundles with our Solevato Sangiovese and their olive oil.

Sip with Nikki and that will get you $10 off your order. You can have an olive oil subscription if you're going through it that quickly and have it delivered right to your door.

And one of my favorite things about what Liz and Donald are doing, because he's got a culinary background as well, is recipes. They come up with and share recipes as part of their newsletter that you can use their oils and their vinegars to create.

Liz and I were recording remotely and we each had a bottle of Sollevato Sangiovese in front of us as well as her two oils. So you'll hear us tasting all three of those things.

And we also both prepared pizzas to experiment with pairing and see how the pizza and the oil and the wine all played together. And let me just tell you, they played well together. So we're just jumping in with wine in our glasses.

Here we go with the encore release of Liz Tagami. Cheers, my friend. Here's to your first podcast. I cannot believe this is your first time on a podcast. How is this even possible?

I know, right? It's been time and it is the perfect person to do this with.

Thank you.

And should we take a sip here?

Yes, we should. A little Solomon. Cheers.

My mouth is singing.

I can't say anything about it because I made it. So I have to be quiet and let you say whatever you're gonna say. And that can be now or later.

Can I just say juicy?

That's a great word.

And my socks, if I had socks on, they'd be rolling up and down. I love this wine.

Before we joined the session formally, I on the first pour, I set the glass down and we do something in olive oil tasting when we're talking about aroma. I learned this from a taster in Spain. He said, if you can detect the aroma at arm's length, that's a 10. That's 10 fruity.

If you have to stick your nose all the way in the glass, then that's really 0 or 1. And I thought that description was really helpful because you're there and you're on a taste panel and you're calibrating and you're.

You agree that, okay, we're tasting a three or we're tasting a five. But when he said that the first time, I picked up a glass and I had a 10 and I wow, this is a really grassy, green, amazing oil.

And I was like, I was just starting to lift it to my face. Those of you who have not yet tasted this or experienced this wine, this is a 10. Fruity for me, just coming right out of the bottle.

And the flavor does not disappoint.

Thank you. That's a new thought for me about smelling from arm's length. I'm going to use that.

And even though I have notoriously short arms, I say that I have T. Rex arms. Arms length still generally a measurement. So enough about me. We're here to learn about you. So first and foremost, thank you for being here.

I know that you're busy. I know that you have a lot going on in farming and in business and in speaking and all the things that you do.

So I'm just so excited for our listeners to, a, get to know you, but B, they have a lot of questions about olive oil. I told you, I put out a call for listener questions, and the list is long, so people are really curious about this.

So before we jump in and start debunking and teaching people the correct and accurate information about olive oil, how did you get into this world?

Gosh, I'll try to keep it as the short version. I'm a sixth generation Californian, so we grew up with the bounty around us.

And that said, my mom was a product of the convenience era, so she wasn't a scratch cook. My husband's mom, she was a European immigrant, so it was a completely different way of cooking.

And my first olive oil experience that I can recall was the Time Life cookbook series from the 70s. Maybe a little spiral bound with recipes for the kitchen. And we had food of Italy, China, India, and France.

And I was in high school, so my boyfriend at the time and now my husband and I would go through these and we would read the cookbooks and do things.

Whoa, whoa. Did you marry your high school sweetheart?

That's amazing.

And the recipe called for two tablespoons of olive oil. And we were cooking out of his mom's kitchen. So it's like, oh, there isn't any olive oil here. Let's go to Raddo's in downtown Oakland.

And we carefully measured out the 2 tablespoons as if we were doing baking powder in our baking recipe or something. It was because we were trying to be exact to what time life told us. And it had to be olive oil. I'm sure it went into the cupboard and it came out.

Even though I am a Californian and I had been in the food industry at that point for five years, I didn't say anything to the buyer at the time. But it's like, what type of olive? You mean there's more than one from a. I know there's green and black. Right. And some of them have pimentos. Yeah.

So they came back and said, these are Mission olives. And the guy nodded sagely and says, okay, true California variety. Mission olive is the only native variety. So that was really cool.

And as it turned out, that the buyer was from Lindsay, California, which was where the home of Lindsay Olives, the canned olives. And that kind of stayed with me then while I was at Williams Sonoma, we had a chance to start buying olive oil on a regular basis.

So I always had 750 milliliters on the counter. My husband's a. Was at the time a professional cook. So we always had olive oil. And we did a little tasting bar at the William Sonoma flagship.

That was a big thing for us in the early 90s. So I'll go back to that 250ml. That just by chance, is about the per capita consumption in the US at that time.

200 mils of olive oil, which is.

Yes, like a third of a bottle.

You knew that's how I was going to measure in seven.

Well, that's how. That's how I. That's how I think it. I think in seven 50s, people go, oh, how many liters? I say it's a half.

Whatever the bottle of wine is, is our benchmark in our world for.

And per Capita. So there were some families that probably had a lot at. At. Probably the household rate was, you know, 25 or 30% of households even had olive oil.

And what year was that?

That was mid-70s. Okay, mid-70s.

This us.

This is us consumers. And they're being led by a couple of things, Nikki.

They're being led by just that whole thing about there's more of olive when people understand that there's more than one kind of grape. And then chocolate tastings and beer tastings and cheese tastings. Olive oil tastings aren't that far removed.

And I'd say that was probably the primary driver. And secondarily, it's the health benefits that we're learning about.

I hope we could talk about both, because for me, I like to lead with the aspect of pleasure. Of course, being healthy is a good part of that.

I would like to, if we can start with a good foundation for our listeners and then build upon it when we get a question from Dominic in New Jersey. Listen our questions. Who wants to know what is the difference between extra virgin olive oil, evoo, and quote, regular?

I know this could be a whole podcast episode, but if we could define and summarize the importance and the definition of evoo?

Olive oil grading is very specific, both with chemistry and with sensory aspects. Organoleptic, if you will. I'd say that the easiest way to approach it is binary.

If an olive oil is made solely by mechanical means, it's called virgin, and I didn't even use the word extra. It's just virgin at that point.

If something is used to chemically extract the oil, like in the seed oil industry, it's typical to use heat, pressure and hexane or sometimes benzene to extract, because those are more difficult. Think of those little seeds, right?

In the olive oil industry, if there are really horrible defects, a good example is there are some countries where there are a lot more trees than there are mills. And some of these trees are very inaccessible. They're on hillsides and things like that. And yet there's always a shortage of oil.

You need to be able to get to them. So the least expensive, the easiest way to get an olive harvested is by gravity.

You let the fruit get so ripe that it falls from the tree, and at that point it's already beginning to ferment. And when it's on the ground it quickly becomes a form of compost. That's a defect called fustiness. And so what they'll do is allow that the first.

So maximum oil, they'll sweep that up, rocks, cow dung, bad olives and all, put it through the mill and crush it. But they have to deodorize it. And that becomes the end product is pure olive oil.

Okay.

So when you see something called pure olive oil, it's just refined.

And even if it's completely sterile at the beginning, the fact is that they are overripe and fermented, and that's going to affect the aroma and the flavor.

To me, that word pure in that context, how you just described it then is a bit misleading.

No, it's fortunately a marketing term. And, yeah. Oh, I only eat pure olive oil. That's actually by definition, it means it's been refined.

Safflower, corn oil, peanut oil, avocado oil, all of those are refined oils. Because of the nature of the oil itself, they have to go through a refining process. Now back to Dominic's question, specifically about extra virgin.

Remember I mentioned there's something called virgin? If you have an oil solely by mechanical means, just that nice family goes out, they crush the olives. And it's got some defects.

Oh, some bad olives got in it. And it's. No, it's. I've got some fustiness. It becomes virgin. There is a slight defect or if there is some imbalance or something else.

So if you can't meet the chemical standard or the sensory standard, it's just virgin. And a very high percentage of the world population for millennia have enjoyed virgin olive oil. That is what it is.

Extra virgin really is a post World War II concept that comes from the industrialization of how we can extract oils in the modern era. The idea of extra virgin is that not only does it have no defects, but it has a certain level of aroma.

And virgin, in terms of chemistry varies depending. If you're talking to the usda, the International Olive Council in Madrid, or the Olive Oil Commission of California, there's no one standard.

When people say, what's the best olive oil? Yeah, it's the one that you love.

If somebody tells me that their grandmother, if their grandmother in Greece gives them 5 liters from their family and they take it and they keep it under the sink and they use it all year long.

And if that happens to be fusty or have olive fly or by the end of the 12 months, become rancid before the next harvest, who am I to say that's a bad oil. That's what they love. So in matters of taste, there's no dispute. But that same token, you have a very fresh olive oil.

It's very clean in the mouth, there's no defects.

It just get the fruit and then you're going to do something that is very complex and maybe a little bit muddy and maybe you'd call it barnyard if it were something.

Yeah.

And so I don't have virgin oils, but I appreciate, understand and respect people who make them and love them or are given them as gifts from their families, because that's part of our culture.

Yeah.

People have had olive oil like that forever. So I hope, Dominic, that answers your question.

Yeah.

I like to say one last thing, and I know I'm on a soapbox here, but if your doctor tells you, your cardiologist, that you need extra virgin olive oil to lower your inflammation and you're paying for an extra virgin and it's defective, if it is rancid or fermented, then you need to get your money back because you're not getting what you paid for. That's our beef, I think, in the industry is mislabeling if it's virgin. If it's pure, that's fine. There's plenty of room for any kind of oil.

But if you're paying for extra virgin, it better have all the right octane.

How do you know rancid? How do you know most people would be able to experience the aroma or the flavor of rancid and say, this is not quite right.

It's not fresh, it's not clean. But how do you know?

UC Davis did a study, it was probably 14 years ago, where they asked consumers which olive oil they liked. The majority of them said they preferred the rancid oil because it's what they're familiar with.

Because I think most people are not storing it correctly and it's past its date. And to them that's the baseline of what they think it tastes like. Yes.

We were ringing our hands when we saw the results. The question isn't which do you like? The question should have been, which olive oil is fresh?

Yeah.

And they would have been able to get that. And having run a tasting room and had little kids even, who can tell you which one is fresh. It's different.

Yeah.

Let's go back to. You're scratching your head now at home and you're wondering in the cupboard, is your olive oil fresh or not? I'll go back.

And this is really helpful for Americans because it goes Back to childhood. Do you remember the smell of Play doh?

Very much. Recall it instantly.

What's the aroma of crayons? Both of those are the smell of rancidity. They have high oil content and they're all rancid. Your olive oil should not smell like.

Play doh, which to me smells a little like paint, is what I something.

And there are ketones. There's. When you start looking at ketones.

Yeah, yeah.

And when we're talking about rancidity, it's important to remember that's something that happens after the olive is grown and harvested and milled and bottled.

There can be gorgeous gold medal best of show oils that if they're not stored the right way or if they're kept too long, will eventually smell like Play doh.

Okay, so I'm glad you brought this up because let's answer Dana's question. Which where should they be stored and how long are they fresh for?

This is an easy one for people who are listening to a wine podcast because our recommendation is cellar temperatures. Ambient temperatures in most homes are a little bit too warm. So certainly away from the stove heat, light air are not good.

In wine, you probably talk about headspace, you know, in the bottle as you start drinking out. So if there's head space in your bottle, if you have a bottle of olive oil and it's taking too long to consume, it may become oxidized.

So even if it's got a two year shelf life that's unopened.

Right.

Once you open it, you should consume it within probably six weeks, I would say. Or decant it into a smaller bottle or put some of your into a.

Smaller bottle so you have less.

You can do that. Or you could top it with some nitrogen. If you have one of those little things that you do for wine preservation.

You can do that on your meal.

So yeah, I would say keep it cool. We like to say mid-60s is ideal.

Like wine. Yeah, you mentioned about where you store it.

What's interesting to me is if you go in most people's kitchens, especially if they like to cook, most people have a thing of olive oil next to the stove because that's convenient of where you're using it. But is it not the worst place to keep it because of the heat?

It is. And we have ours within arm's reach of the burners as well. And you just got to try to keep it moved away when you get the burner on.

Yeah, but then don't keep it there next to the hob, as they say. That Moved off. And we go through olive oil really fast, so we have no danger.

I'm sure you do not. Speaking of. Okay, this leads me to the health benefit question. I consume a lot of olive oil.

I'm guessing this being your world, probably even consume more. Are you a believer of the health benefits of a spoonful or a shot or sort of that internal. Not just as a condiment approach.

The science backs up that 2 to 4 tablespoons a day lead to a 30% reduction in degenerative diseases, enhanced cognitive function, a bunch of other things. There are over 200 micronutrients. And going back to the science we know it's almost an embarrassment of riches. What a good olive oil can do for you.

It sounds like snake oil because it you talk about diabetes and cholesterol and high blood pressure and dementia. But the European culture where you are enjoying leisurely meals with people you love with a glass of wine has such wisdom embedded into it.

The Mediterranean diet isn't just these quote unquote superfoods. The Mediterranean diet is about the pleasure.

Of the table, the time to enjoy it.

The time to enjoy it. And the thing is that these things give us pleasure. My goodness, Nikki, if you feel great about just eating the two tablespoons, okay.

But if you mixed it into a smoothie, if you made it into your.

Coffee drink in the morning, that's a thing.

Now coffee, if you fried an egg for 6 grams of protein and you had a little shallow fry in a cast iron pan for a little bit of iron, think of all the good things you're doing and you're getting that flavor. Those biophenols don't disappear. We have measured that.

The polyphenol content in the oil diminishes with cooking, but it gets higher in that steak or that egg or those vegetables that you sauteed. So it doesn't last forever. If you keep frying in that oil, the second fry, the third fry, it'll.

There's less there because it's gone into the food you've already eaten. So I would say sure, if you want to drink olive oil in the morning. But I think there's a much more pleasant way of having your dose as a way.

Speaking of this pleasure, like, my mouth is watering. Can we taste one together? One of your beautiful two bottles that you sent me with these very special, your own beautiful blue glass tasting glasses.

Is it time?

I think so. And with wine, you have Riedel.

Yes.

Glass. And we don't have a big maker like that, but we Have a standard that the olive oil international olive council in Spain has set.

So I had these glasses made to that standard. I'm going to ask us to open the Arbaquina first.

Just looking at this bottle, since it arrived last week, I'm just. I'm like. I'm caressing it and I'm hugging it. It's gorgeous.

The nice thing about Arbequina is that it really illustrates one of the phases of agriculture in California. This is new technology to be able to make an oil like this.

So I'm going to go ahead and pour into my blue glass, which we do, because color should matter. If the oil is brown, it's oxidized straw, yellow, dark, emerald green. It really doesn't matter in terms of whether it's ext.

And I'm gonna go ahead and do.

A little pour while you do that. I'm gonna crack this. I love, by the way, on these beautiful glasses that people can get on your website, which of course, we're gonna share.

It's got the T on the bottom. So that's branded because you had these made, Is that right?

That's right. There's a lot of professionals around the world use these glasses.

And so I make them as neutral as possible, But I do like people to know that they're mouth blown and hand finished right to the spec.

So that's beautiful.

I'm going to just hold my oil in my hand, and it fits right into this part of your hand, so it's really nice. And we go like this to create a little bit of friction and a little bit of heat.

So you've got the base of the glass in one palm and then the other hand, you're twisting the glass to twist it.

And Nikki, you're right handed.

Yes.

So you have the glass in your left hand. Now take your right hand and put it over the top so that you're trapping those volatile aromas as you spin around there.

Okay.

Our bikina is a Spanish variety. It has been hybridized into a more dwarf form where it will accept being pruned aggressively into a hedge.

In the late 20th century, some Spanish investors came up with this idea that they could use a modified grape harvester, an over the row canopy contact harvester, to take fruit off the trees more readily.

And in order to do that, they would have to plant the olive trees more close together, and they would have to keep them pruned in the same shape of the inside of the harvester.

Okay.

Which becomes a hedgerow.

Okay.

And arbakina is self fertile, but it is more productive when it has pollenizers like Koroniki and Arbasana. So you'll very frequently see that. And I think in terms of calling something just Arbakina, you have to have at least 90% in the state of California.

So many producers have a field blend. So you're buying Arbaquina, but it's got a little bit of these other pollenizers in it, which can be very interesting.

Mirrors wine a little bit, I think, in the labeling and the leeway.

The Spanish investors looked around the world and where was their ample land and water and acceptance of new ideas? And they thought about South America, Australia, and they chose California because it was the same hemisphere.

Got it.

And the original super high density arbaquina orchards in the world are right off of i5 in our toys and they are still productive. What does this mean in English? What does this mean to you as somebody who likes to cook?

It means that I'll give you an example of the orchard that that is behind me here. Two, two and a half miles. 135,000 trees on 200 acres can be harvested by three men in six days.

If you've ever looked at a tree, even in your backyard, plum tree, and think how long it takes you to harvest that one tree. 135,000 trees in six days with three men. That's because you're running the harvester almost day and night.

You just change teams out and you've got a gondola running next to it and all the fruit that's coming off of the tree goes right next.

Does it vibrate the trees and then they fall down into the debts. Is that kind of what I'm envisioning?

Imagine a small house driving over a row of trees that the top of the tree is about seven feet. So the harvester itself, I think is 15ft high. And as it's driving over, there are six bow arms that come out and they do vibrate.

There's also a tread on the bottom that goes in only one direction. So as they are driving, the tree trunk is hugged as the machine. The harvester's moving about three miles an hour.

And as the olives fall, they don't touch the ground.

They fall inside the harvester where there's two conveyors that go up to the top and Then a chute that shoots it out the side to the next row where there is a driver pulling a gondola. And the reason why I say three men is that one guy's driving the harvester, one guy's driving the gondola, and they're keeping it full.

And then they radio in if it's getting full. They get the next guy in to go right behind him and fill up the next gondola while he parks it into a bigger unit to take to a mill.

So that's they're hauling 20 tons of olives per session. And these big mills like California Olive Ranch. And when I had a mill at Lucero, you're milling, we were doing five tons an hour.

So a hundred tons an hour comes through in big truckloads. And it means that the cost of oil per ounce is so much lower.

And because you do it, you go from tree to mill so quickly, you don't have a problem with fermentation. We always start with aroma. Okay, so I'm going to ask you, Nikki, is this fresh to you? Do you smell any play Doh?

No, I smell fresh olives. Yeah. Oh, my God, my mouth is watering.

When we taste as olive oil people, we look at three things, and those three things have three descriptors. We look at fruitiness, bitterness, and pungency as three positive attributes. Those define extra virgin.

And when we say fruitiness, we mean how does it smell on the nose? So you're smelling it. And so we're judging in competition before we even put the oil in our mouth. We're already rating the fruitiness.

We're rating it in terms of its intensity, and we're rating it in terms of. Is this a medium intensity? I can't smell it at arm's length, but it's pretty nice here, mid range. So I'd say this is like a four maybe.

Smells so good. I want to taste it.

It is. It's really good. And I'm getting mostly green, but some ripe fruit as well. Yeah, for me.

And which foots with when the period of time it was harvested in wine.

We talk about if there's a greenness in wine. It's like that purazine veggie vegetal, like bell pepper note. I think I understand that's not what we're referring to when we say green in olive oil.

Green in this situation just equals a freshness.

It's a positive. What I sense here is a little bit of green apple, and it is very floral to me today.

So this was harvested In November.

But, yeah, I'm getting a lot of floral.

Yes.

In this.

Oh, it smells amazing.

I don't know if it's jasmine flowers or something. The second thing is bitterness that's in the mouth and that is.

But what you would think is there's some astringenty to it and that's a positive attribute. And we look at intensity there as well. And then when we swallow it to the retronasal, you smell much more with the.

With everything in the back of the throat. So we do something called strapagio. We. We aerate and then as we swallow, we get the retronasal then. So we. It is part of it.

And that's the bitterness, that's the cough.

That was Morgan's question. Yeah.

Morgan said when an olive oil is more spicy, or what I would describe as a burn in the throat, which is not always bad, what makes some more or less in that way to have that burn?

We now know it's oleocanthal. Oleocanthal. It's like the miracle phenol of all the phenols. So I'm going to go ahead and taste now and I'm going to do the little.

I need to stop asking you questions so we can taste it. But I have so many.

So I'm going to go ahead.

Okay, I'm just going to copy you on the screen how you taste it.

What I did, Nikki, is it was already warm from my hand and when we were talking, but when I had it in my mouth. One of the things we learn as tasters is that the chart they told us about in elementary school about where our taste buds were.

Everybody's mapped differently. And we have taste buds in our cheeks and all these places. So I hold the oil in my mouth and I let it be there.

And then I did this Trapaggio where I aerated it. So as you do that, you're drawing it across your buds and back into your throat. And as you breathe, it goes back up into that retro nasal.

It didn't make me cough this one.

It didn't. I've got a little burn. It's got a long finish. I still feel it in my throat as we talk.

And the green apple is much more present to me now than it was on the nose. And I'm also getting some almond, and that's the ripeness.

Almond is a note in olive oil. Would you put that in the fruitiness category or. It's its own.

It's all fruit.

That's all.

Any kind of. From grasses to Flowers to fruits, they're all considered that amazing.

I'm so happy to be here this afternoon doing this with you and having this olive oil in my hand and about to be in my mouth. This is so awesome.

So if we were on a taste panel and judging oils against each other, we would take a slice of green apple for the pectin content and the acid. It would clear our palates and a little sip of fizzy water.

We're doing something different today because we're going to threaded pizza, but I think it would be really fun.

I'm glad you suggested Pizza Margherita, because one of the things that we find is that however the oil tastes out of the glass or out of the tablespoon, if you're going to do it that way in the morning, is it transforms food. So how this pizza will taste with tomato, basil and cheese. Donald made a high hydration crust. So you want to.

Oh, Donald, your high sweetheart who's a professional cook. That one?

Yeah, Professional now that he works for me. But he had all that restaurant and catering experience.

And just so our listeners know, the reason the margherita pizza came to be in this tasting is because you were asking about pairing with my Solevato Sanchez. And what was a nice food pairing with that, which is where the pizza came up. Cause it is just classic with anything tomato based.

And then we looped it all together between the pairing of the wine with the food and the olive oil. That's where that came to be. So thank you for asking about the perfect Sangiovese pairing with solavato.

Ascolano comes from the Le Marche region, which is northern Italy. In Le Marche, which is north of Tuscany, it's kind of closer to the Adriatic side, they grow this olive and it's used as a table olive.

They don't make oil from it. It is a big fat olive, very high water content, but lower oil content. And in La Marche, they stuff them with meat and deep fry them.

Okay.

And it is a dop food way to go.

Nice choice.

Oscalano was planted in California as a table olive in the middle of the 20th century. And the cannery started rejecting them because they were too soft and they would bruise and didn't can. Well, it became something that out of.

Born of necessity, that farmers in our county began to make oil out of Oscalano. The yields are lower than traditional oil olives, but the flavor is unique. I think it's probably warm enough for you just to just get the aroma now.

Oh, my God. It Smells totally different. It's fruitier.

It's remarkably. It's. It is. It's.

Oh, my goodness.

Fruitier on the nose. So there's more intensity there. And also the character of it is unusual.

You don't get this in any other olive, and that's what makes it occult olive, because it's unexpected. If I give you the descriptors here, I think it's only fair because your listeners can't even hear us smelling here. Let me.

Let me just say, like a peach repair. Very good. Very good. It's a stone fruit. Most people detect peach first.

Yeah.

Some people get some tropical notes from it.

Yeah.

But when the Oscalano is ripe, it expresses itself this way. And so our signature is to have mostly ripe with some green sensations to give it some structure. Structure.

I'm going to go ahead and taste this oil now, and immediately I'm getting more bitterness, and I'm getting a little bit more pungency. Ooh.

Definitely more bitter. That low note of bitterness to. For lack of a better way to describe it, buttery. Just like silky in my mouth.

All these are very clean in your mouth. There's no. There's no thickness of age to these. They'll thicken later. We all do when we get older.

Amen to that. Wow.

Keep staring at my pizza.

Okay. Should we do some pizza? So did Donald make pizza dough?

He did. He did a high hydration dough. So we made it very thin crust and big open, crispy ends here.

Okay.

I had two bites, and I was gonna put a little bit of arbequina on.

I can't eat pizza without olive oil to drizzle on top, especially on the crust in those last bites. It's my favorite thing to do. Oh, my gosh. Yes. The freshness with the oil on there. I feel like I want a sip of Sangiovese now, too.

I agree.

Cheers.

Salute.

Thursday. Salute.

This is a good life.

Look at what we made, Liz.

I know, right?

Look at her.

I went back and. And I was looking at some of your posts from your production and your. The inspiration, and I just got such a warm feeling.

Nikki, I say this in a way that doesn't sound matronizing, but I'm so proud of you. Oh, thank you. But you made that. You had this. They say thoughts become things.

And to be with Disney and it takes the Super Tuscan and resolve to learn something and do something. I can share.

The first time, I was at a trade show and somebody poured for me in blue glasses and I was there in my designer suit and high heels and over caffeinated and too much to do. And he says, I want to pour this for you.

And we were swirling and, you know, I was like, I needed to keep walking the trade show, and I couldn't tell the difference. It's not the best tasting circumstance anyway. But I didn't have the capacity.

As a wine taster, you're so far ahead just because you focus on aroma and flavor and finish anyway.

Now, did you put the escalano on your pizza yet?

I'm gonna do that now.

Okay, let's do that. Mm. It's almost like the acidity of the tomato on there. And we have some really good tomatoes on here. That brings out fruit notes in the Escalano.

It almost makes it have, like, a sweetness when you introduce the fat of the cheese and the acid of the tomato.

Really good call. I was just gonna say it's like a bowl of fruity pebbles.

That's awesome too. Can I ask you another listener question?

Please.

I think that we've talked around this, but I wanna make sure that we answer this for Sandy had two questions. Which olive oil is the healthiest for you? I think we determined Evoo extra Virginia as far as healthiest.

Was that fair to say from our earlier conversation?

In terms of a grade, you would start there? Yeah, I would say fresh, extra virgin.

That's the important part, is the freshness. Because the health benefits will decline as the oil ages, oxidizes, and or goes towards rancidity.

Different olive varieties have naturally different levels of phenolic content. So if you're looking at health. And let's say that they're all fresh and they're all well made and they're all well stored.

Coratina, as an example, has a higher phenolic content than arbequina.

Arbequina is so popular, not just because it's lower cost to produce because of the mechanical harvesting and pruning and everything else, but it also is more accessible to the American palate who grew up on Wesson. Right. If you're only used to seed oils that have no flavor or rancid oils, an arbequina that's somewhat sweet and mild is very accessible.

So that is part of the success of places like California Olive Ranch. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's the arbequina is our everyday oil at home because it's the best value per ounce.

And it goes with a lot of things. In Italy, Cortina comes in the South a little bit further Northeast than Sicily. In Sicily, they have an amazing olive called nocherella del balice.

Say it again. Say it again.

Okay, I'm gonna have another sip of wine because I'm already feeling this.

The sangiovese makes you sound more Italian. It's a. It's a magical.

See, well, no charella del beliche.

Okay.

And the. No charella. And I'm. I think I'm mangling it because I am now half a glass in, and I'm Asian, so we don't metabolize wine very well.

If you have an Italian oil, there are hundreds of varieties of oil, and then there are these little places where there's varieties that you never see outside of their area. A friend of mine in Umbria has Canino. I've never tasted 100 canino, but that's an olive variety that he has as part of his field blend.

And then there's people who are on hillsides where the oil tastes different than if they're at sea level. I tasted this in Crete. I tasted. I. I did a vertical tasting. Same harvester, same miller in Crete.

And they laid out four glasses for me, and I tasted all of them, and I ranked them. And I said, this one has the most complexity and the most harmony. This one is the most pleasing to me.

And the old gentleman who didn't speak English came into the room, and his daughter translated, and he looks so happy. He says, this one, 200 meters on a cliff, wild herbs growing under it, ancient trees. This is my favorite place. This is my favorite oil.

So I think terroir is part of it.

Yeah, I knew this going into our conversation today, but I think it's really been confirmed for me the parallels between wine and grapes and olive oil and olives. There are a lot of parallels just in expressions of place and where they're grown.

And then my assumption, please confirm or deny, is that when we talk about Ascalano having notes of peach or tropical, what's causing that is the chemistry and just the natural compounds that are in there that are mirroring those compounds from peaches and tropical and flowers. Like, the same reason why I teach people that your Cabernet Sauvignon has hints of BlackBerry when we know there's no BlackBerry in there.

It's just the chemistry and the way that your esters and your ketones and all of those wonderful, fun application of organic chemistry are expressing themselves and mirroring things that we recognize on the nose and in the mouth from flowers and fruit and spices. Is that fair to say?

I would Say so. And I think, keep in mind that this isn't like pulling a lever and saying, okay, you're gonna get the same flavors, the rain and the sun.

And so much that's going on is going to change. Even conditions at the mill. And that's part of the joy, too.

When you look at a gold medal or a best of show, it's not that one is better than the other. It's that somehow it's reached its best expression of itself. Is Coratina better than paqual? Is Oscalano better than Arbakina?

I can't make that judgment. How are you using it? How are you enjoying it? If you love it and you use it in a particular way, that's important.

Now, if I have to taste 20 of these, same variety and make a judgment, then I start to look at how is it within dog show, the breed standard? Right. Does it exhibit what we say is an osculata should have? And then is there some complexity and is it harmonious?

Because it could be out of the park aroma? If there's no finish, then, you know, I have to mark it down.

I love that word harmonious. And you've mentioned it a couple times today, and I feel like that's not a word that we use a lot in wine that we should.

I think we talk about wine being balanced and maybe they're.

I think it's the same. I think that's the same. Yeah, I think it is.

Harmonious is a beautiful word, and it's the name of a Disney fireworks show. So maybe, you know, I just love that harmonious. Can I ask one or two more listener questions before we say goodbye? Okay.

So this actually Disney group and Facebook that I'm a part of, which is called Ear for each Other, actually commented and sent in a listener question. So Ear for each Other is a group of Disney cast members and Disney supporters.

It's a wonderful Facebook group that was born out of COVID to support all of the Disney cast members who were furloughed or laid off and started side hustles and other jobs. And so it's a place to connect people with supporters.

So the question was, tell us a little bit more about cold press and what does it actually mean in terms of flavor and quality? And is it worth the cost?

Disney person? That is such a good question.

You can't see my face, but I'm smiling right now at the camera because it's related very much to what Dominic and Morgan asked in terms of how you talk about olive oil and words. We use.

So first cold pressed comes from a pre World War II concept where olives were harvested, typically brought in with trucks or donkeys or on wheelbarrows to a stone mill where it was ground and then placed in mats and a screw press was put to them. And literally the weight of the press down and time oil leaked out of the olive paste. So.

So first cold pressed was how they used to in the olden days, make oil like Roman times, because that's all they had. And if you think about it, as long as the olives are on that stone mill with the other millstone running over it, it's being oxidized.

And then you stuff them into esparto mats or even synthetic mats, which. How clean can those get? There's always going to be some fermentation left over or rancidity or both, which transfers.

And then how long does it have to be pressed? That is a surefire way of getting a virgin oil. That's why it's solely mechanical means. No extraction with heat or anything else.

And then, by the way, what some people would do is take that paste that is spent and you've got all the oil out of it. They take it and they apply hot water to it and press it again or chemicals and press it again.

And they get a second pressing which they could use for lamp oil or lampante in Italian. So you'd light lamps with it. So you wouldn't want lampante, because it's not really for eating.

I don't want.

That's why lamp oil.

I don't want lamp oil. Pizza?

No. But that's why they say first cold pressed. Today we crush the olives in a hammer mill.

We malax them for 20 minutes or so, which helps the oil and the water and the flesh to start to separate a little bit. And then it's put through a decanter. And my centrifuge ran at 3,000 rpm. And that separates the oil, the water and the paste.

Olives are, if you're lucky, 16 or 18% oil. You don't want moisture, you don't want water in your oil because it'll ferment and you don't want sediment in your oil after it.

It goes through that centrifuge at 3,000 rpm. It flows into something called a polisher that goes at 6,000 rpm. That gets a little bit more.

Now, I would say today probably 80 or 90% of Californians then do something called racking, which is same as in the wine industry. And where you have lees, it's the same thing.

They're in conical tanks and they siphon stuff that you don't want off the bottom which is going to ferment and then you take the oil off the top.

And so when you measure the sensory aspect of these oils that have been filtered in this case and the phenolic content, there's a, a very slight difference.

And the argument always was again, this is 10 years ago, 15 years ago, oh, I don't want to filter my oil because I want all the polyphenols and I want all of the flavor. What changed my mind and the reason why I air freighted a Spadoni filter from Umbria for our production.

That sounds cheap.

It was so worth it. So yeah, first cold pressed. I'm glad you asked because it doesn't really exist anymore unless you still use donkeys.

And there's the short answer.

And people still use it because people expect it. So every time I see it on a label, I cringe.

Marketing fashion term for marketing purposes. Is that a fair statement?

Because it's. Because it's familiar.

Yeah.

Yeah. It makes people comfortable. But yeah, not valid anymore.

Not equal or synonymous with quality. All right, so final question.

And again we've talked around this, but let's bring it home for Karen who said what should a consumer look for when wanting a superior oil for salads and dipping on the store shelf and at the supermarket?

I would say one aspect would be is the place you shop someplace that has a high turnover. If there's someplace where you know that people are buying a lot of oil. I was in a high end specialty store in Berkeley.

There must be 60 olive oils on the shelf and everything from knee level to just above my head. And you stand there and you watch somebody shop and there's the same stuff in the middle of the aisle at shoulder height, just where you could reach.

That's getting shopped and nothing else is moving. In past years I have found friends oils on those shelves that are four years old, things that had long expired.

So when you go out there, if you trust the grocer and they are turning that stock, that's one thing I think the other thing is that if it's a producer versus a bottler, right. If somebody's just bottling, it is just a brand name, it's hard to know the provenance. Organic isn't necessarily a guarantee of quality.

And neither is saying that they have a gold medal.

Let's give them your website and tell them where they need to go to get these two beautiful oils that we have been tasting.

We have the Lucero Olive Oil brand which we sell in our shop called American Olive Farmer and you can find us on the web@americanolivefarmer.com the oils that we tasted today are currently available and we also have a subscribe and save program which may be of interest if you're a heavy user. Nikki, I want to take a moment and just thank you for organizing our time together today.

I enjoyed tasting and talking and sharing with you and I want to thank your listeners for sending such great questions.

I will put your website americanolivefarmer.com in the show notes and thank you for creating a special discount code for our listeners.

That is right. It's a small operation. Right now it's just me and Donald, my husband the pizza maker here.

Where can people follow you and connect on social media?

Earl at Lucero Olive Oil is the official for the company on both Facebook and Instagram. And personally I'm at Merchant Adventurer or Liz Tagami.

Final Thoughts Anything that we haven't covered that we must cover before we say goodbye today.

There's so much more about what we know about ourselves and our land and whether it is wine, grapes or olive trees, I look forward to exploring that together.

Food and cooking has been part of my life since the late 70s and and when I see young people today with a level of sophistication you couldn't imagine 40 years ago, my heart is warmed. And whatever we can do to help each other find that vibe that the food and wine that we love and how to get it, then I'm there.

Did you know there was that much to olive oil? Oh my gosh, it's fascinating.

I mean, I thought I knew some, but after talking with her, I feel so much more strongly about the importance of knowing where it comes from and knowing how it's made just as much as I do with the wine that we put in our glasses. And I can't thank Liz enough for her time when we recorded these episodes.

But also I want to thank Liz and Donald for being the sponsor of the podcast and being wonderful partners.

And I'm so excited to be able to offer the first time doing anything like this, a bundle with my baby, my passion project, Solovato Sangiovese and their Olio Novello. Visit solovatowines.com the link is in the show notes.

I've put together a specially priced bundle with a discount on the wines and the oil and check out americanolivefarmer.com and don't forget to use your code Sip with Nikki for $10 off your order. If you are interested in being a sponsor of the podcast. If you want to be like Liz and Donald, please reach out.

Send me a note nikkiipwithnikki.com we'd love to shout out your product, especially if it's something delicious that I love to share. And finally, and don't forget, you can be an angel and support the podcast through the link in the show.

Notes Notes and I would be ever so grateful for your support. Whatever you do between now and next time we are together, I hope that you sip well.