Carl Ipsen

 

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Detailed Table of Contents

 

Carl Ipsen: The True History of Olive Oil

 

How I Got Here

Intellectual and other debts, tracing back 50 years or so.

 

Introduction

What intros do? Why should you read this book?

“And one question this book asks is do we really need to romanticize the history of olive oil, exaggerating health claims, inventing a millenarian culinary tradition and ignoring the fact that the road to the production of copious amounts of good, some great, olive oil was not a linear one and only arrived at recently? Is it not enough that fair Nausicaa anointed the body of brave Odysseus, that olive oil illuminated mosques and churches from Mecca to Saint Petersburg to Santiago de Compostela, that the best olive oils today present a complex and delightful flavor palate that has fueled a revolution in western cuisine?”

 

Prologue: A Very Long History

Reviews, based on secondary sources, the history of olive oil from prehistorical times to the early modern period. Contrary to general perception, olive oil was more important historically as a fuel than as a food. It played important roles in the three Abrahamic religions, for ritual more than dietary purposes, and was often too expensive for widespread consumption as food.

 

Chapter 1: Olive Oil in the Age of Industrialization

The eighteenth century saw a vibrant trade in olive oil between the Kingdom of Naples and, especially, the United Kingdom where the oil was used to lubricate wool fibers during the manufacturing process. In this way “Gallipoli oil,” so-called in England after the small port in Puglia from which flowed most of the oil, played a key role in the industry that kicked off the economic revolution of that century. The chapter goes on to look at production methods on the ground (and under it) in southern Italy and the geographically restricted role of food oil that accounted for about 20 percent of oil production at the time.

 

Chapter 2: Olive Oil in the Age of Revolution

The Napoleonic Wars interrupted trade between the United Kingdom and the European continent and so was a period of hardship for oil producers. Studies in England and in Naples reveal the importance of olive oil to the wool trade and the role that olive oil played in southern Italian diets. After the wars, trade rebounded and olive oil from Italy and Spain found its way not only to European destinations (including England, France, Russia) but also across the Atlantic to the US and the nascent textile mills of New England. Meanwhile, best practices spread from traditional areas that produced small amounts of good quality oil (Provence, Liguria, Tuscany) to Bari in Puglia which produced a more oil than the aforementioned regions combined.

 

Chapter 3: Olive Oil in the Age of Migration

The second half of the nineteenth century saw mass migration out of olive oil producing regions, especially Italy in terms of total numbers, to North and South America and beyond. These migrants created a demand for food-grade olive oil in the Little Italies, Greek Towns, and Portuguese enclaves along the Atlantic Seaboard of the US, in Buenos, Aires, Rio de Janeiro and elsewhere. The traditional oil packers – Bertolli, Carapelli, Filippo Berio, Puget – were founded in this period creating olive oil brands that were marketed both in Europe and to those migrant groups in the Americas. As demand for industrial oil declined, that for food oil increased.

 

Chapter 4: Olive Oil in the Age of Fascism

The early twentieth century saw continued increase in oil exports, mostly from Italy and Spain, and new technologies, in particular oil refining that turned low quality smelly oil into a bland product that might be blended with a small amount of good oil to give it flavor, so-called “pure olive oil.” The World Wars and the Spanish Civil War disrupted trade and to a lesser extent production. The interwar period also saw the first olive oil classification scheme introduced in Fascist Italy as well as the establishment of sensory evaluation requirements.

 

Chapter 5: How Virgin Became Extra

Olive oil may have hit a low point in the 1950s with the development of “synthetic oil” and any number of substances being marketed as olive oil. Italy responded with the first “extra virgin” law in 1960 while the UN Food and Agriculture Organization created a study committee and eventually the International Olive Oil Council (IOOC, later IOC) that adopted similar criteria. As Spain emerged from the isolationist period of the Franco regime, that country, by then the world’s leading producer and exporter, assumed its role as the dominant force in olive oil politics. The IOC has always been headquartered in Madrid. While only a small percentage of oil qualified as extra virgin in the 1960s, continuous cycle milling technology, developed in that same decade, made it possible to produce ever greater quantities of good quality oil. Meanwhile, concern about heart disease surprisingly led to creation of a “Mediterranean Diet” in which olive oil played a starring role. Olive oil left its traditional ethnic enclaves and conquered palates from Milan to middle America to Japan.

           

Chapter 6: Olive Oil in the Extra Virgin Age

Olive oil came into its own in the 1990s. Oil production technology continued to be perfected, and new cultivation techniques developed as well. The earlier extra virgin laws were fine-tuned and tightened up with the introduction of “panel tests;” groups of trained expert tasters, at least in the European Union, determined whether oils qualified as extra virgin. Those same tasters manned the juries of countless oil competitions that sprang up around the world. The premium being paid for olive oil only increased the incentives for fraud, and authorities, again mostly in Europe, wrestled with increasingly sophisticated deceptions.

 

Chapter 7: Olive Oil in the Age of Climate Change

Recent decades have seen the emergence of two levels of oil production. The major labels are producing copious amounts of good quality extra virgin. Meanwhile, a host of smaller producers have raised oil manufacture to an art, much as had previously occurred with wine, and extract flavors unknown in the past. Oil production has spread to places as far flung as California, Argentina, and Australia. That said, 97% of oil production still comes from the Mediterranean region, and compared to the production of seed oils, olive oil, while celebrated worldwide, can only satisfy a small percentage of the world’s fat requirements. Meanwhile, climate change is altering harvest schedules and impacting the viability of olive growing in some regions, both positively and negatively. And the arrival of Xylella fastidiosa in southern Puglia - that very Gallipoli famous in the Eighteenth century for its industrial oil - and decimation of the groves there pose an existential threat.

 

Wrapping Up

Conclusion, return to Puglia, and alternate views for olive oil in the future.