In the double contest “L'Oro di Italia” and “L'Oro del Mediterraneo”, Medium Fruity category, the "Lode di Eccellenza" with 5 drops was awarded to the Messer Francesco 1640 -100% Italian in both competitions.
In anonymity guaranteed by a public official, a jury composed of national and foreign members coordinated by OLEA, evaluated the extra virgin olive oils registered in different categories: DOP and IGP, monocultivar, biological and "extreme oils" (those produced in the Northern Italy over 45 parallel). The official award ceremony will take place in the context of the Grand Gala of Italian Oil.
... Learning EVOO in pills ...
The most accurate way to evaluate the quality of an EVOO is the sensory analysis performed by a group of experts called PANEL (in general there are 8 to 12 tasters). Based on the detection of certain negative attributes as well as the measurement of the intensity of three positive attributes (fruitiness, bitterness and pungency), the PANEL leads to the “classification” of olive oil from a sensory point of view. Samples that show a median of defects not above zero (= 0) and a median of fruitiness above zero (> 0) are categorized as EVOO, which represents the highest classification level an olive oil can achieve. (chemical analysis provides little or no information on the quality of an EVOO). Before tasting, the oil must be brought to the temperature of about 30 degrees centigrade; both the smell and taste have to highlight fruity features (depending on the evoo: artichoke, almond, tomato, tomato leaf, cut grass etc), an oil that is odorless and tasteless is not only low quality but couldn’t be classified as extra virgin olive oil. Besides the fruitiness, other merits of an EVOO are bitter and spicy (a spicy and bitter oil is an oil rich in antioxidants, in fact the responsible for the bitter taste is oleuropein a phenolic compound characterized by a high antioxidant activity) . The defects, which must be absent in an extra virgin olive oil, are instead unpleasant smells / flavors such as: rancid, fusty / muddy or musty-humid
