SpiceLines

B and I are in Andalucia, in Jaen province, not far from the town of Pegalajar, in a white stucco house set amidst the olive groves of the Melgarejo family. To get here, we climbed into an old red Jeep, veered onto a bumpy dirt road, and climbed up into the hills, lurching around hairpin curves, until we reached the grove—5,000 Picual olive trees on 30 rocky hectares—that have been in the family since 1780.

Andalucia is olive oil central. So much liquid gold flows from the 165 million trees planted in the region’s eight provinces that there’s a good chance the “Italian” olive oil you’ve been drizzling over your salads was partly made here in southern Spain. Half that production is concentrated in the province of Jaen, which in turn produces more oil than all of Greece. Much of that comes from the Picual, a pointy-tipped varietal which virtually oozes oil.

Picual has a controversial reputation in the industry. With oil yields ranging from 22 to 27 percent, it’s the most widely grown olive in the world, but poor handling has led to poor quality. In tasting sessions of Picual oil, you may hear comments like “bitter,” “rough,” “burning,” even “smells like cat pee.”

But the Picual is actually an exceptional olive. It produces a highly stable oil that is not as likely to go “off” as that from other types of olives. Many blends include a small percentage of Picual in order to stabilize more volatile oils in the composition. It is also a particularly healthy oil, high in fatty acids and antioxidants. Typically it contains 80 percent monounsaturated oleic acid which may figure in the prevention of cardiovascular disease, and a low 4 percent linoleic acid, considered harmful when consumed to excess.

What really matters, of course, is that, in the right hands, oil from the Picual can be utterly delicious.

At Aceites Campoliva (from left to right), Andres Martos Medina, Dr. Marino Uceda, and Blas Melgarejo
are passionate about the production of extra virgin olive oil from the Picual olive.

Earlier this morning, we had a chance to taste Melgarejo’s extra virgin Picual olive oil right at the source. Blas Melgarejo and Andres Martos Medina, good friends and, together with Blas’s older brother, Pedro Melgarejo, the guiding spirits behind Aceites Campoliva, walked us through their almazara, or olive mill, which is located behind locked gates in the little town of Pegalajar. The harvest was long over, so the place was cold and eerily quiet. Outside there are reminders of the past—a 1936 mechanical press with woven mats and an enormous terracotta storage jar. But inside we found an immaculate, totally automated, state of art facility which has been custom-engineered to extract every delectable nuance of flavor.

As we strolled through the almazara, it became clear that this enterprise is fueled by a deep passion for the Picual. Only Melgarejo olives—and those grown by their friend and professor, Dr. Marino Uceda, who heads the olive oil research station at Jaen—are processed there. Picual olives are hand harvested early in the fall and pressed at low temperatures the same day; before bottling, the oil is stored in stainless steel tanks topped off with nitrogen to prevent oxidation.

Those are the basics. But after Dr. Uceda joined us and explained the meticulous on-going adjustments to the production process made at Melgarejo’s almazara, my head began to spin. The level of detail is boggling. For instance: “We are going to see if we can mechanically create the same pressure on the olives that the old stone presses used because that didn’t destroy the cellular structure of the fruit.” Dr. Uceda’s favorite phrase, by the way, is “hacemos un investigacion”— which might be loosely translated as “we’re seriously researching that topic.”

What does all this mean? Seleccion Melgarejo, 100 percent extra virgin Picual oil, shatters the conventional wisdom about the much-maligned olive. As Darrelll Corti wrote in his September 2007 newsletter, it is “particularly fine… a medium fruit intensity with the aroma of fresh cut grass, and light to medium bitterness and pungency. The common, characteristic scent of this variety is not present due to its early harvest production and shows that Picual is a variety capable of producing high quality if you know how to do it.” [Italics are mine.]

Seleccion Melgarejo went on to win the gold medal at the Los Angeles International Extra Virgin Olive Oil Competition in 2007. Importantly, it is certified under the Sierra Magina Denomination of Origin, one of 10 denominations in Andalucia. (D.O. is the Spanish equivalent of the French A.O.C. and Italian D.O.C.) Sierra Magina refers to oil produced within the natural park of the same name, and according to Darrell Corti, is the only denomination that recommends an early picking date for its olives.

But when you get down to it, olive oil is really all about food. And now we’re dining in the company of about 20 odd-family members and friends who’ve trickled up to the old white stucco house in the groves “because they heard we were cooking lunch,” laughs Andres.

The company includes Blas’s older brother, Pedro Melgarejo; Cristobal Rentero, who bottles the oil at the almazara, and his wife Mari Vi; a few pretty teenage girls (like 13-year-olds the world over, all dressed up with no place to go) and a flock of little boys scampering in and out of the front door.

The food is incredible.

At lunch Cristobal Rentrero grills links of homemade chorizo over glowing olive wood coals.

I’m sitting against the huge fireplace, its innards scorched by two centuries of blazing logs, watching Cristobal expertly grill thinly sliced pork (“from the neck of the pig,” says Andres), on a rack directly over smoldering olive wood logs. He dips half a lemon into a glass of cloudy olive oil and brushes it over the meat before placing it on the coals, sprinkling each side with coarse sea salt.

“Eat!” someone says and we do, balancing glasses of beer with paper plates filled not only with the smoky, charred pork, but in quick succession, succulent little lamb chops, the best chorizo I’ve ever tasted – homemade of course—and thick slices of streaky bacon.

On the table there’s more: plates of plump, buttery Manzanillo olives stuffed with anchovies and delicious freshly roasted almonds; a platter of salty serrano ham; bowls of pipirrana, a soupy Andalucian salad of chopped tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers and onions prepared by Mari Vi; hunks of bread topped with tomato and tuna; and to wash it down, glasses of beer and red wine…for dessert, a bowl of apples and oranges.

Nothing fancy, just the best food I’ve eaten in a very long time.