Olives versus Grapes
Italian versus California

(*This message is brought to you by small olive oil producers.)

‍Brace yourself for this stat: it takes 1300-2000 olives for every 250ml of olive oil.  Crazy.  In comparison, it takes about 400 grapes for a bottle of wine.  A bottle of wine is good for a meal or two.  A bottle of olive oil can last weeks or months depending on how often you use it.  You can spend major bucks on a bottle of wine grown by a small producer.  Olive oil doesn’t get the same respect…yet.

And to make matters worse, much of the Italian EVOO that is imported into the US isn’t from Italy (some comes from Turkey, Greece, Spain), and it isn’t pure olive oil (they mix it with cheap seed oil) and it isn’t time stamped so it might be sitting in warehouses for years.  A recent study sponsored by the University of California Davis Olive Center revealed that out of the 200 supermarkets surveyed, nearly two-thirds of the olive oils were falsely labeled as “extra virgin grade”, and one-third were not 100 percent olive oil, they were cut with other types of oils.