Beyond Extra Virgin: A Congress on Premium Olive Oil

The fifth Beyond Extra Virgin congress opens in Cordoba on Wednesday under the title Olive Oil Opportunities: Adding Value Through Excellence, with about 250 people expected for three days on how to make, judge and sell the oils that sit above the legal top grade. It is organized this year by Spain’s olive oil interprofessional body, which is a sign of where the argument has got to. Here is what is on the program, who is speaking, and why the idea is contentious.

What the congress is about

The premise is simple and awkward. Extra virgin is a legal minimum, not a description of excellence: an oil qualifies if a trained panel finds no defect and some fruitiness and the chemistry stays inside the limits. That covers oil from a careful estate picked green and milled in four hours, and it also covers a competent industrial blend. Producers at the top end have been looking for a way to say so without inventing a grade that nobody regulates.

The program runs from the conditions for excellence in the grove and the mill, through sensory science and new methods of evaluation, to the market: the global appetite for premium flavor, olive oil culture among consumers, chefs and restaurants, and, in a nice practical touch, the art of frying with very good oil.

The congress is presented by Association 3E, the Culinary Institute of America at St. Helena and the Spanish interprofessional organization, with translation in Spanish and English. It started in 2007 at UC Davis and was held last year in Verona, so this is the first time the Spanish sector has run it.

Who is in the room

• Claudio Peri of Association 3E, who has done more than anyone to write down what excellence in olive oil means in technical terms.
• Greg Drescher of the Culinary Institute of America, bringing the American restaurant end.
• Tom Mueller, the writer whose reporting on olive oil fraud has made him unpopular in parts of this industry.
• Jean-Louis Barjol, executive director of the International Olive Council.
• Aris Kefalogiannas of Gaea in Greece and the food writer Nancy Harmon Jenkins.
• Chefs including Dani Garcia, Celia Jimenez, Maria Jose San Roman and, from the United States, Paul Bartolotta.

Teresa Perez, who runs the Spanish interprofessional, says this edition is more ambitious than previous ones, with more speakers from more countries, and that the Mediterranean diet will have a bigger part in it after last year’s UNESCO listing. The California educator Alexandra Devarenne, involved since the first edition, says the notable change is that people who were skeptical about the value of premium quality a few years ago are now interested.

Why it matters, and why it grates

Spain has spent three years selling oil below the cost of producing it. A congress on premium quality in the middle of that is either the answer or a distraction, depending on who you ask. The premium segment is small: most of the world’s oil is bought on price by people who will never pay eighteen euros for half a liter, and telling a Jaen cooperative with two thousand tons to sell that the future is excellence can sound like being told to eat cake.

The counter argument is the one the organizers will make all week. Spain cannot win a race to the bottom against countries with cheaper land and labor, the only defensible position is quality that can be tasted and proved, and somebody has to build the vocabulary and the market for it. Both arguments are correct, which is why this congress keeps happening.

Sources

• Olive Oil Times, International Congress Beyond Extra Virgin Coming to Cordoba
• Olive Oil Times, Q and A with Spain’s Olive Oil Interprofessional Director Teresa Perez, 4 June 2011
• Olive Oil Times, 4th Beyond Extra Virgin Conference to Focus on Olive Oil Excellence, 19 July 2010, on the Verona edition and the bodies behind the series