Learning about extra virgin olive oil > Quality
In an article in “Food Technologies”, Prof. Giovanni Amelotti, from Milan University, emphasizes:
“The main aspects which, in the area of olive oil, characterize quality are those or taste and smell, stability of oxidation, absence of contaminants, such as phyto-farmaceuticals, phyto-hormones, anti-parasitics, hydrocarburic solvents and chloroderivates, and, of course, the nutritional characteristics expressed in terms of fatty and saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated acids, the presence of phytosterols, vitamins and natural antioxidants.
 As for every product of agro-alimentary transformation, the great merit of oil consists, therefore, in maintaining and bringing out the characteristics of the original raw material, that is to say, of the olives.”
It is therefore obvious that it is impossible to produce good oil from poor quality raw material, not even by the use of the most sophisticated extraction procedures; thus arises the necessity for careful selection of the fruits before the beginning of the process and the preventive elimination of fruits that have been attacked by parasites or that have suffered from frosts, since every defect will influence the result of pressing.
To this day we still do not posses an instrument which, on the basis of chemical-physical parameters, is able to evaluate every single component which makes up the infinite aromatic tonalities of an extra- virgin oil; sensory analysis is therefore of fundamental importance.
Organleptic characteristics allow us to distinguish between products which analytical determinations may pronounce identical. The quality awarded to extra-virgin oils is in fact the result of two different types of analysis: on the one hand, chemical-physical analysis, the aim of which is to establish the exact composition of oil, in terms of percentages of fatty matter and degree of acidity; on the other hand, the organoleptic test, which judges oil from the point of view of its characteristics of sight, smell and taste and evaluates its merits and demerits.
It is fundamental to remember that olive oil is the first food product for which sensory analysis, based on the Panel Test system (a particular standardized methodology of analysis which uses the expertise of a group of selected, trained and tested tasters), constitutes a discriminating market factor; in the Footnote XII “Organoleptic evaluation of virgin olive oil” of the EEC Regulations n. 2568/91 it is established that an oil must undergo tasting in order to determine its market category through a points system. A new marking sheet is now being perfected by the C.O.I., where marking is no longer by points but by the indication of the intensity perceived for each of the negative and positive attributes of an oriented segment.
Olive oil is classified as follows:
Extra-virgin: when the defect average is equal to zero and the fruity average is above zero;
Virgin: when the defect average is above zero and lower than or equal to 2,5 and the fruity average is above zero;
Lamp oil: when the defect average is above 2,5 or when the fruity average is zero.
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