Monthly Archives: March 2014

Castillo de Canena goes back to the origins and launches the World’s first Biodynamic Premium EVOO.

The primary element which differentiates Castillo de Canena is that the shift of their groves has been from integrated production to organic agriculture, in a region of moderate altitude, rich soils, and perfect accessibility.

The irrigated groves have been operating for some time, providing excellent harvests.

That is to say, this transformation has been entirely voluntary, pre-meditated and aware, and forms part of an ambitious long-term overall project which seeks to obtain new oil with a high added value, satisfying their most exacting, sophisticated and sensitive clients’ requirements on the basis of substantial R&D&I.

Therefore, obtaining the organic certification awarded to their groves in October 2011 was a mere first step for receiving the Demeter Certificate awarded by the Spanish Association of Organic Agriculture, guaranteeing them the production of the world’s first biodynamic high-grade extra virgin olive oil.

Taking care of the ecosystem

After obtaining the Demeter Certificate, Castillo de Canena went through a three-year adaptation period, during which they endured dozens of audits, successfully completing the process last year. Not to mention the necessary work dedicated to train, educate and raise awareness among the members of their team in order to achieve the goal of creating the first biodynamic olive oil in the world.

Food and drink supplier Continental Quattro Stagioni (CQS) has launched a Colavita special edition World Cup extra virgin olive oil.

Available in 750ml bottles, the bottle is in the shape of a football with pentagonal and hexagonal shapes cut into the glass. ‘Brasil 2014’ will be cut into the neck collar.

Limited Edition! Soccer, or calcio as it is known in Italy, is not just a sport – it’s a worldwide passion for players and spectators alike.

Excitement for the game reaches a fever pitch once every four years when teams from around the globe compete for the coveted FIFA World Cup.

Alimentaria, Spain’s leading agri-food industry trade fair and one of the biggest in the world, will attract buyers from the five continents to give the 3,800 participating companies more business and export opportunities. It will showcase the sector’s latest trends and will reinforce the connection between industry and gastronomy with the chefs in “The Alimentaria Experience” who hold 50 Michelin stars between them.

Alimentaria 2014, being held from March 31st to April 3rd, will fill practically Fira de Barcelona’s entire Gran Via Exhibition Centre. This year’s show has been promoted around the world to identify and attract mainly buyers from emerging markets and European countries. It is expected that a large number of international visitors from over 140 countries will come and that more than 600 key importers and distributors in Latin American, North American and Asian markets will attend to participate in over 8,000 business meetings.

This focus on internationalisation falls in line with the objectives of the Spanish food and beverage industry, which aims to boost exports and go from 22,600 million Euros in 2013 to 46,000 million Euros in 2020.

By categories, 9.4 million liters of extra virgin were sold, as for virgin, 3.3 millon were purchased.

As Anierac detailed, cumulative sales in the five months that have passed since the beginning of this campaign stood at 50.7 million for extra virgin (almost the identical amount as the same period last season), and 20.5 million liters for virgin olive oil, increasing 14.57% over the previous season’s sales.

Specifically, 9.7 million liters of mild olive oil were sold in February, while 5.8 millions of intense olive oil were traded. In the accumulated data of this campaign, mild olive oil’s outputs were of 53.5 million liters (a million liters fewer than during the first five months of last season), resulting in a slight decrease of 1.79%.

The WOOE, held until March 27th, is the largest event dedicated to olive oil that is celebrated in Spain with an international focus, bringing together business and professionals dedicated to this product.

With a rise of 20% in participation at Ifema Madrid and audience of more than 2,000 trade visitors from 37 countries.

Products of over 100 mills from Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, Galicia and the Balearic Islands will be represented these two days. Its aim is to create a business forum based on different areas like Delicatessen with Olive Oil, where more than 40 companies will participate with a broad representation of cosmetics and gourmet food whose production involves olive oil.

Also, star chef Kike Piñeiro and his team will be in charge of running the show cooking area, creating exquisite and original snacks like Bivalve molluscs with bubbles of Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Sea Bass Marinated in EVOO or Cow’s Tataki with Extra Virgin Olive Oil emulsion.

More than 200 high school students took part in a program of olive oil sensory testing held in Kalamata, Greece .

The program aims to educate young teenagers on the unique organoleptic characteristics of olive oil and was co-sponsored by the International Olive Council (IOC) , the Foundation “Captain Vassilis”, and the Technological Educational Institute of Peloponnese.

In a statement is indicated that the program entitled “Promotion to High School students in Messinia of the organoleptic characteristics of olive oil as a quality criterion ” – was organized at the initiative of the Foundation “Captain Vassilis “, in collaboration with the International Olive Council .

The olive tree was a gift of the gods to the Greeks. Goddess Athena planted the first olive tree on the acropolis at the center of Attica. The grateful Greek inhabitants of Attica honored the goddess by naming their polis Athena (Athens). The affection was mutual. Athena adopted and protected Athens. The citizens of Athens venerated Athena with elaborate Olympic-like games and festivals. They also built and dedicated their greatest temple, the Parthenon, to Athena.

The sacred olive tree flourished throughout Greece and the Mediterranean. Its olives and oil have been nutritional and medical food for millennia.

Greeks ate olives and oil in cooking. They used oil for their lamps, lighting their homes and temples and altars. The Greeks also made perfumes from oil. Some of those perfumes, exported all over the Mediterranean in the delicate and beautiful glass containers known as “aryballoi,” were aphrodisiacs. But olive oil was fundamental for sports and bathing. Athletes rubbed themselves with oil, their bodies becoming like shining statues of gods. Women bathed and anointed their bodies with oil. Greeks in Athens and Olympia also used olive wreaths to crown their victorious athletes.

Cholesterol, rather high cholesterol levels have always been a subject of worry for many. One such reader wrote in to us asking about how he can control his cholesterol levels. Here is an in-depth answer by our expert Dr Varun Mallya on exactly what he should do.

Question: My total cholesterol is 239 and LDL is 170, and my other parameters are okay. How to reduce my total cholesterol and LDL? What foods can help me control my cholesterol levels and maintain heart health? As of now I spend 45 minutes walking and jogging.

Answered by Dr Varun Mallya

Changing your food habits is as essential as getting the right amount of exercise. All you need are a few simple tweaks in your daily diet and exercise regime to help you get your cholesterol levels under control. Here are some tips you might like to include into your lifestyle

1. Olive oil: Switch to olive oil for cooking. Research has shown that the Mediterranean people consume olive oil and have very low incidence of cardiovascular diseases and stroke. Olive oil contains a mix of various anti-oxidants which lower your bad cholesterol (LDL). Use it for your tadka or add it as a dressing to salads. Extra virgin olive oils are even more beneficial as they are less-processed and retain more anti-oxidants than the other varieties. Read more about skin and hair benefits of olive oil.

For Greece, extra virgin olive oil is considered to be an agricultural product of utmost priority.

The Greek state, however, does not provide the opportunity to methodically learn how to produce this high quality product, as Greek universities, technological educational institutes, schools or vocational schools do not offer a single course on its production.

A workshop, however, comes to fill this gap and attracts olive oil producers and bottlers from several Greek regions to Athens.

Vasilis Frantzolas is a third-generation olive oil producer from the village Ligourio in Argolida, in south-eastern Greece, and has been holding olive oil seminars in Athens for the last couple of years.

Frantzolas has worked as a civil engineer and construction manager and has recently acquired a M.Sc. in Food Policy at the City University of London.

Be it the extra virgin olive oil or the pomace, Indian recipes cooked in olive oil make for an equally delectable treat.

Using olive oil for Indian recipes makes a dish equally tasty. Plus the benefits of olive oil as an elixir for good health renders a healthy appeal to a dish.

Oilve oil can be used in all the recipes like various vegetable preparation, curries and also to make dosas. Even though the olive oil is expensive as compared to other oils available in the market, its health properties makes olive oil as a must have in your kitchen.

Almost every other dish like a palak paneer, tadke wali dal, rajma, jeera rice, dum aloo, coconut rice, dosa, masala dosa, puliyogare etc can be cooked in olive oil without compromising on the taste. In fact, olive oil with its rich texture enhances the taste of a particular dish.

If you want to start cooking with olive oil, try the oil first by using it once a week. Once your system starts liking the taste, you can make olive oil part of your daily cooking regimen.

FIORE Artisan Olive Oils & Vinegars, the recognized leader in Ultra Premium Extra Virgin Olive Oils in the region is thrilled to announce the arrival of the full complement of the recently harvested Mediterranean Extra Virgin Olive Oils.

“We have a great selection from this year’s harvest in the Mediterranean. We’ll offer two varietals from the Galantino Estate in Puglia, one each from the Melgarejo and the Oro Bailen estates in the Andalusia region of Spain, and three Portuguese oils from the PAÇO DO CONDE estate; two single varietals and a fantastic tri crush cuvee produced specially by the miller from three select olive varieties,” says Pat O’Brien, Director of Marketing.

“We also selected two Californian EVOO’s to round out the range for this season.”

An Italian minister vowed on Monday to use his country’s upcoming presidency of the European Union to pursue a campaign by southern EU producers against Britain’s “traffic light” food labels.

Speaking as he went into EU farm ministers’ talks, Agriculture Minister Maurizio Martina said “uniformity” in European food labelling is “a theme we need to put on the agenda”.

Britain argues that the scheme – which classifies food as red, amber or green according to the fat, salt and sugar content – is voluntary and “fully legally compliant with EU food law,” while BEUC, the European Consumers’ Organisation, wants the system extended throughout the European Union.

Anglo-Spanish import/export company Tradex hosted an exhibition featuring 10 of the biggest Spanish Olive oil producers (photo: Ellie Hoskins)

Some of the finest producers of Spanish olive oil jetted in to Barking hoping to sell their wares at an international business fair.

Some of the oils that were brought to Barking

Recently-launched import and exporters Tradex Consultancy UK, based at the Barking Enterprise Centre, invited the companies to meet with British sellers over three days in a bilingual trade event this week.

Chief executive Juan Galicia, who previously worked for the Spanish embassy, was delighted to see so many different businesses come to the area.

The doom and gloom of climate change is well-documented: Rising sea levels; infectious diseases on the march; more frequent droughts. But a new study suggests that for olive oil production, climate change will be both a blessing and a curse.

In the Mediterranean Basin, which produces 97 percent of the world’s olive oil, average temperatures are expected to increase 2°C (3.6°F) between 2030 and 2060. Luigi Ponti, a researcher with the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, wondered what that heat spike would mean for olive oil production.

On one hand, olive trees are drought-tolerant, and people have made olive oil in the region since ancient times. On the other hand, no one knows how such rapid warming could affect production.

To find out, he and his colleagues designed a model to predict how a 1.8°C increase in temperature would affect olive growth and yield in the region, and also how the olive fruit fly, the olive producer’s nemesis, would fare.

(Typically, these types of demographic models compare weather data with a species’ geographic distribution to predict how climate change will affect it, but Ponti’s team knew it was important to factor in the fly, since changes in its population can impact olive production.)

While the International Olive Council recently trimmed its estimate for world olive oil production this season from nearly 3.1 to 3.05 million tons, GEA Westfalia Separator Ibérica has upped its from 2.76 to 3.3 million tons, which would set a new record.

In 2012/13, the world produced slightly more than 2.4 million tons of olive oil, according to the IOC’s provisional figures, largely due to a disastrous year for Spanish production, which totaled just 616,000 tons.

Chipotle Olives Bring Seductive Smokiness To British Summer

So Olives Et Al, the Dorset-based purveyors of delicious food, are giving people what they want with their latest olive offering – the Smoky Chipotle Olive.

This naughty little number is being launched at the end of March 2014 at the Farm Shop & Deli Show – the gourmet equivalent of London Fashion Week.

Chipotle (pronounced she-pot-lay), a smoke-dried jalapeno, is a fiery favourite in Mexico adding a subtle, earthy heat to all sorts of dishes. It’s also perfect paired with a plump juicy olive, of course.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more natural pairing than grapevines and olive trees; they’ve been companion plants throughout the Mediterranean for millennia.

So it’s not surprising that olives thrive in the Livermore Valley, a wine-growing region where distant sea breezes turn warm days into cool evenings.

As the number of vineyards has soared in the past 15 years, olive trees have grown apace, mixing with vines and expanding into groves. There is now a wealth of Livermore olive oil producers, from enthusiasts picking a few Manzanilla trees, to small wineries, to entrepreneurs pressing thousands of gallons of European varietals.

The largest is the Olivina, a property whose name reflects the rolling acres of olives and vines planted in the 19th century. But the initial plantings of vines and trees fell prey to Prohibition, phylloxera and personal misfortune decades ago. The land was left fallow, and the Olivina became a cattle ranch.