Yesterday I attended a press event at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City for a client we’ve been working for an exciting product – olive oil! But its not just any olive oil, the Flavor Your Life olive oil campaign is a three year project that is being promoted by the European Commission & the country of Italy and Unaprol – an organization of Italian olive oil producers. The campaign was launched to promote awareness of European high quality olive oil and olives while also informing consumers about the quality of the product, its traceability/origin, it’s usage in cooking and food as well as its many other benefits. Bellucci brand olive oil, as featured in the photo, is also apart of this campaign. So how exactly does an olive oil tasting go you ask…
The event started with a brief meet and greet – it was nice to be able to put a face to the new people that we’ve been working along side for this project. They had olive oil stations with bread set up all over the venue. It was also great to see an array of collateral that we had created for the brand spread about the event as well. Here’s a quick shot at one of the banners {sorry for the sun glare!}
After that we were brought into a room where tables were set up with three cups of different olive oil set in front of us. Then, it was on to the learning portion of the event. I learned so much about olive oil in such a short time. With the first taste test of “light” olive oil – I realized that picking up any old bottle off the shelf really does make a difference! Then came taste #2. It tasted and smelled like the standard extra virgin olive oil I have in my pantry and most people agreed. But guess what? It was “rancid” olive oil. That’s right, olive oil that was well past its prime. Perfectly ok to taste, but it has been sitting on a shelf so long that all of the natural flavors have gone away and the taste has all but disappeared. Then we tasted the third sample. Much like a wine tasting they made us swirl, smell then taste the olive oil. But what was the difference? This was the Bellucci olive oil – it was fresh, robust, and tasted like an olive straight from the tree. If that’s is what olive oil should taste like – I’m hooked. I think one of the most interesting details that we learned during the event is that not all olive oil bottles need to have a harvest or crop date on them. So, your olive oil could be sitting in a vat somewhere for years before it’s bottled, and then stamped with a sell-by-date. Olive oil is a juice – its squeezed from a fruit. Would you want your orange juice sitting in a vat for two years? I don’t think so.
After the learning and sampling came my favorite part – the food. We were at the Institue of Culinary Education after all. One of their chefs prepared four different plates for us using the olive oil. She actually spoke about and prepared an example of each dish right in front of us. I’ve taken photos of a few of the dishes below but the images don’t do them justice – we all licked our plates clean! First course was a Trio of Bruschette topped with califlower, broccoli rabe and mushrooms.
Second dish was a brazino with clams and mussels in spicy broth with sun tried tomatoes and fennel-flavored olive oil. Third course I didn’t snap a shot of but it was an escarole and parmegiano salad with anchovy vinaigrette.
Fourth dish was an olive oil cake with wine-soaked raisins and zabaglione. Amazing. She told us that she actually used the “light” olive oil for this as it works well in baking.
After all of the delicious food we got to go home with a swag bag that had a bottle of the Bellucci olive oil we tried. Its not available in stores just yet but you’ll be able to purchase it online within the next month or so! Also we received that cute olive oil dipping dish as featured in the 
first photo.
Overall it was such a fun event with great food and a new found appreciation for olive oil. I’ll leave you with these takeaways – check your olive oil labels, know where your olive oil comes from, and just because it’s more expensive, doesn’t mean its going to taste any better!
~Allyson
