Olive Oil

Life is good in Granada: slow, but good. Not all that much has changed in the last week: I still eat my body weight in food at every meal and almost always feel sick afterwards (yesterday's lunch consisted of grilled swordfish with a green salsa, vegetable soup with hand-made pasta, and homemade fried-calamari) courtesy of my Italian "Señora," and I still have absolutely nothing to do from 8:30 when I wake up until 4:00 in the afternoon when my four-hour class starts. I'm actively trying to get involved with a chorus in the city: if the one at the University doesn't work out, I'll join one in the community, which would be like the "old people" choruses I sang with in Mystic at home, but weirder because all the "old people" would speak Spanish. That pursuit gave me an excuse to walk around the university proper (remember, I'm taking my classes this first semester in an outpost of the university called the Center for Modern Languages...), which is huge and on a hill overlooking the city, but outside of that, remarkably ugly. I try to run at night to work off some of this food, but I'm still a little sore from my fall in Madrid, and given the choice between going out for tapas and running, I generally choose to eat.

What are tapas, you ask? Historically, when ordering a drink in a bar between the hours of about 7:30 and midnight, the bartender might place a small pate on the top of your glass to keep the flies out of your drink, tapando, or topping, the glass. The tradition progressed to also throwing some Serrano ham, bread, fish, or olives onto that plate, thereby giving you a little appetizer with your drink. The custom grew so popular that they started doing it all over Spain, until they realized that they could make money off of the tapas, charging people for them instead of giving the food away for free. Now, the only region where tapas are still free is Andalucía in the south of Spain, and then only in certain places. Granada happens to be one of them, and many Granadinos move from bar to bar eating the tapas for their suppers. Now you know.

Today, I went olive oil tasting in the countryside around Granada with one of the girls from the program. Originally, a group of us had wanted to go wine tasting through La Rioja, a region of Spain famous for its red wine, but we soon found that it was all but impossible to get there by using the bus system from Granada. So, I was thrilled when I saw a brochure for a one-day olive oil tasting tour through the Lecrín valley just outside of Granada, a beautiful place tucked into the mountains of the Sierra Nevada filled with orange, lemon, fig, pomegranate, and olive trees, many of the orchards dating back to sometime around the 13th century and started by the Moors. The tour, unfortunately, was more expensive than many of us would have liked, but since my friend Juliane and I weren't traveling this weekend like much of the group, we decided to go for it. I think it was worth it. Our tour group consisted of our Spanish driver, our French tourguide, two French women, and a couple from England, so Juliane (who also speaks French) and I had fun being quasi-trilingual.

This is the 350 year-old olive tree where we started our tour. Spain is the world's largest producer of olive oil, and has over 10 major varietals (varietals - whipping out the wine vocab!) of olives. After we toured the olive orchards, we went to a 15th century mill, where we learned about ancient and modern production techniques. Only buy Extra Virgin Olive Oil! The real explanation is involved and boring, but basically olive oil classification has to do with the level of acidity allowed in the oil (Extra Virgin is under 2%), the temperature of the water used when pressing the olive paste (colder is better), and the amount the oil is refined and/or distilled before getting to you. If the oil isn't "virgin" or "extra virgin" specifically, they put chemicals into it to increase the smoothness and clarity of the oil, and can use second-press olive paste (the gross stuff left over after they get out the good oil) instead of doing it correctly. Extra Virgin has the most anti-oxidants and health benefits, the best taste, and has the highest tolerance to heat for use while cooking without releasing harmful toxins - so don't use the cheap oil to cook! And Dad, you are not allowed to make any comments in regards to this last paragraph and the benefits of Extra Virgin products...

We tried five oils in a tiny "white village" in the mountains across the street from the mill. (The village was very cool - it has only around 1000 inhabitants, was preparing for some festival or other, and had a fountain in the town square flowing with drinkable ice-cold mountain water.) Basically, the same principles apply to tasting olive oil as to tasting wine, though you try the oil directly in the mouth first, followed by sampling it on bread, with an apple slice in between each oil to cleanse the palate. I'll spare you my tasting notes, but tell you that a good olive oil should always have a peppery finish in the throat, due to the chemical composition of the olive. The last oil we tried, the boldest, most bitter, and most peppery, made my eyes water.

We left one tiny white village for another, and had lunch at a mesón, which was included with the ticket - just OK. The drive there was the most interesting, and we stopped to grab a quick picture. Until next time.