What is the difference between Spanish and Italian Olive Oils?

Answer 1

To tell you the honest truth the question cannot really be answered easily.Here in Abruzzo we produce very many olive oils and even have DOC areas where they come from.

If you look at good olive oil and then think of the many varieties of wine you can buy then i would say you will be thinking in the right way.

Olive oil is as variable as that, so an excellent DOCG spanish oil will compare to the same Italian Quality and the taste will be dependant on the region it comes from.Here we often produce an oil with a sort of peppery taste.Abruzzo is gfamous now for its qulaity products in that sense and very many of them are produced without the aid of chemicals.

Apart from that there is a great deal of importance in the pressing of the olive. The best is first,cold pressed olive oil. The olives have to be crushed in a traditional mill without any heat and then pressed using one time filters for each pressing. These filters are then sent off to factories that mass produce olive oil along with the left overs in between, sort of flat cakes, so you can imagine the difference in quality.

Our coastal olives are often much larger and less good for oil, often watered , and they are generally used for eating or for factory produced oil. The best oil comes from the areas where they get good full sun,on fairly steep slopes and with poor quality soils so that the roots go deep down and pick up the subtle flavours of the land.