There is a popular saying “Life is too short to drink bad wine”; you find it on serving trays, towels, napkins, etc. I agree with the saying and suggest that there should be a parallel saying “Life is too short to consume bad olive oil”.

There have been many documented reports of inferior olive oil advertised as extra virgin oil, made in Italy where in actuality scurrilous producers “deodorized” the olive oil by adding inferior olives and other products; and/or using olives from countries other than Italy. Many countries in the Mediterranean Sea area produce superb quality olives, but the more disperse the origin of raw materials to produce olive oil, the greater the likelihood that “corners are cut”  in the production of olives. Hence, it is difficult to assure high quality. Recently there have been documented reports of fraudulent practices in the production of extra virgin olive oil. See http://www.truthinoliveoil.com/extra-virginity and http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-31/italys-extra-virgin-olive-oil-isnt-always-so-virgin-or-so-Italian

The best way to ensure the quality of extra virgin oil is to visit the farmer who produces the olive oil,

discuss his/her processing methods and evaluate the extent to which the farmer abides by organic, biodynamic or sustainable agriculture. Obviously, few people are able to do this, but we have been fortunate to meet producers of extra virgin olive oil on our trips to Italy: two such producers are Casa di Baal and Mila Vuolo.  Both producers use the same three olives to make their extra virgin olive oil: Frontonio, Rhodonella and Lecchino.

I shared Casa di Baal and Mila Vuolo extra virgin olive oil with my “expert tasters” at Goodfellas Barber

Shop; Vito Guarino, who was born in Partinico, Palermo, Sicily and his sons, Robert and Vinny, who  were born in the USA. The experts tasted the olive oil together with the producers’ Aglianico based wines. They approved of all four of the products. Despite being only 20 miles apart, and using the same olives and grapes, Casa di Baal and Mila Vuolo olive oil and wine have a distinct taste and smell; so much so that the experts matched the producers’ olive oil with the wine.

Both extra virgin olive oils have characteristics similar to other Italian extra virgin olive oil that we have tasted: greenish color with a peppery taste. The color and intensity of pepper taste varies from producer to producer.

Have fun and experience fine olive oil and wine from Southern Italy and purchase Casa di Baal olive oil http://www.casadibaal.it/, Casa di Baal Aglianico di Baal http://www.binendswine.com/; and Mila Vuolo olive oil and Aglianico  http://www.si-wine.it.