I like olive oil and I cook with it a lot, so when I heard we would be visiting the Basilippo olive oil plantation and factory in Spain it sounded like a great plan to me. I knew that extra virgin olive good was the real McCoy (kind of like 100% agave Tequila is the good stuff), but that was the extent of my olive oil knowledge. I learned quite a bit more about olive oil on this visit.
Did you know that there’s no such thing as extra extra virgin olive oil? (extra virgin is as good as it gets.) Did you know that by international agreement every bottle of true extra virgin olive oil has a “use by” label on the back of the bottle? (The “use by” date is two years after the olives were harvested.) If you see a bottle of olive oil that claims to be extra virgin but there’s no date on the back, you might want to take a pass. Did you know that darker bottles are better for preserving olive oil than are lighter bottles? Did you know that for the best olive oil, the olives are pressed within 4 hours of being harvested? All of this was new info to me, and all was delivered by our host, Isaac Martin.
Meet Isaac Martin, oil mill master, olive expert extraordinaire, and our presenter at the Basilippo plantation. Mr. Martin was an engaging, entertaining, and informative speaker. Isaac told us that with “only” 14,000 trees, Basilippo was a “boutique” producer. That sounds like a lot of trees to me, but hey, Isaac is the guy would know.
We entered the factory and tasting area next. Good things were in store for us. The factory was about what I expected. It was not running when we were there, as the harvest had already ended. The tasting was an awesome experience. Isaac told us we would be enjoying olive oil and ice cream. Yep…you read that right. Olive oil and ice cream. I know…it sounds gross. Boy oh boy, were we ever in for a surprise.
Let me type those words again. Olive oil and ice cream? Yep, I thought it was crazy, too, until I tried it. At the end of our tour, Isaac took us to a room where two small glasses (with a bit of olive oil in each) were waiting for each of us. That’s the photo at the top of this blog. Isaac showed us how to us to rub the bottom of the glass, remove the paper covering it, and inhale the olive oil aroma. It was wonderful…with just a hint of orange. Then the staff brought in a small plate of chocolate ice cream for each of us, and Isaac asked us to pour the olive oil over the ice cream. I know…it sounds like a screwy combination…but wow…was it ever delicious!
Predictably, the path out was through the Basilippo gift shop. Sue bought three containers of the citrus-scented olive oil. I was a bit nervous about that, but all three made it back to California without leaking. Two of the containers were for gifts; the third was for us. When we finish it, you can bet we’ll be ordering more and if you swing by our place for dinner, Basilippo orange-infused olive oil over chocolate ice cream will be on the dessert menu.
Basilippo also sells their olive oils online and they ship to the US. Here’s the link:
Home | Basilippo EVOO | Online Store and Oleotourism
Here are links to our other blog posts on Spain and Portugal.
Coimbra
Spain and Portugal
Camino de Santiago: Part 1
The Sportster of Seville
Évora
Lisbon
Gibraltar