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What the heck are ... olives?
 Yeah, yeah, yeah ... everybody knows what olives are. They are those awful salty/sour green things with the red stuff hanging out of them that the bartender plops into your martini, and those even nastier little black orbs with a hole through them that your mother puts on the relish tray at Thanksgiving. Or, if you are lucky, and order the olive plate at Tapino, you might find that olives can be a truly tasty delicacy from the Mediterranean. As with wine, the soil and climate of the region where as an olive is grown have a marked effect on its flavor. The location in which an olive is grown, the style and time of its picking, and the method used to cure it, all determine the flavor of an olive. Each type and style of olive - there are hundreds - has its own unique flavor and texture. Our olive sampler contains Kalamata (Greece), Picholine (France), Chalkiidiki (Greece), and Conservale (Greece) olives that represent the most famous table olives in the world.  The purplish-black Kalamatas are brined and then soaked in red wine and vinegar before packing. The Picholines, little green torpedo shaped nuggets, are the principle olive grown along the French Riviera. The "blond" Chalkidiki olives, from the region of the same name along the Northeastern coast of Greece, were "invented" centuries ago by the Monks of the Eastern Orthodox monasteries in the region. The Greek Conservale (Conservolea) is the most popular table olive in Greece.
 The history of the olive (Olea europaea) is a long one, dating back to early Biblical times. The olive branch was the symbol shown by God to Noah to indicate the end of the flood. According to Greek mythology, the olive tree was a gift from the goddess Athena to the people of Athens. In fact, olive trees were cultivated in Crete and Assyria over 5000 years ago. And the olive itself has been eaten and enjoyed by all the peoples of the Mediterranean region for thousands of years.  The olive has always been highly valued; olive oil was used as fuel; as a preservative; as an analgesic; and as a perfume. Olive wood was used for construction and decoration. The word comes from the Latin "olivea" [translation from Latin = "wonderful treat available at Tapino" - Trust me, I am highly trained in these things, I took Latin in the 9th grade]. Since the olive is native to the Mediterranean area, it's no surprise to learn the largest producers in the world are Italy and Spain, where olives are a diet mainstay. Olive trees were introduced to California about 1770 by the Spaniards, where they flourished.  California now provides almost 200,000 tons of commercial olives per year. Unfortunately, most of them are those horrid little black things in the can.
The Olive fruit is classified botanically as a "drupe", botanically similar to the almond, peach, cherry, or plum. Incased within the meaty exterior, lies a "pit" or stone. Within the stone are one or two seeds.
Olives tend to have the highest oil content of all the world's fruits (about 20-30 percent of fresh weight), and the biggest ones weight up to 14-16 grams (1/2 ounce) at maturity. At that stage they are black and will continue to cling to the tree for several weeks. Fruits for oil extraction are allowed to mature. But, for processing as table food, immature fruits are picked or shaken off the tree before they become "dead-ripe".
Olives are grown mainly for the production of olive oil. The olive itself is quite simply the fruit of the olive tree. But unlike most fruits, the olive is never eaten in its raw state. The high percentage of glucosides (olives are the only known fruit that contains these compounds) naturally found in the raw olive makes it incredibly bitter. Anyone who has unknowingly popped an uncured olive into their mouth will testify to this terrible bitterness. For the olive to become edible, the bitterness must be removed from the olive by "curing".
 There are only two kinds of olives: Black (ripe) and Green (un-ripe). The only difference between green olives and black olives is ripeness. Unripe olives are green and fully ripe olives are black. The color of an olive indicates the stage of ripeness at which it was picked. Green olives are picked young, before they begin to ripen, usually in September or October.  They usually have a firmer texture and nutty flavor. What we refer to as "black" olives actually run the gamut from light brown, to beautiful shades of red and purple, all to way to deepest black. As a general rule, the darker the olive, the riper it was when it was picked. Black olives are usually picked in November and December, sometimes as late as January.  The lone exception to this rule is the "olive" which more Americans eat than any other; the dreaded canned "black-ripe" olive! These nasty little impersonators of real olives are picked green, then (for reasons unknown-maybe greater marketing appeal?) pumped with gaseous oxygen to turn them black, their new color fixed in place with ferrous gluconate - basically, they are rusted and then petrified.  Since they taste like no other black or green olive (in fact, they have almost no taste at all, except for a slight metallic buzz and the salt water in which they are canned), it is impossible to put them in the same class as you would any other olive. "Black-ripe" olives are to hand-picked Kalamata olives what Pautzke's Fire-balls fish bait is to Russian Beluga caviar.
There are only two kinds of olives: hand picked (good) or beaten/shaken off the tree (bad).
 The picking process is an important factor in determining the final taste and quality of the olive as it appears on our table. To pick black olives, many mass-producers use sticks or machines to shake the ripe fruit from the trees. Some producers leave the olives on the trees until they are so ripe that they fall off by themselves.  It may be economical, but in either case, the result is an inferior black olive. Since not all olives on a tree reach ripeness at the same time, machine or stick harvesting means that many of the olives collected may be under or over ripe. Olives harvested by either method are likely to be damaged by this rough handling. They have an inconsistent texture with many mushy, soft spots found on any bruised fruit. Mechanical picking also yields an olive with an inferior flavor, as the bruising alters the chemical make-up of the olive.
To avoid these pitfalls, the best producers use an older, more time-consuming method: hand-picking. Careful hand-picking insures that each olive is plucked at just the right stage and all bruising is avoided. This careful handling is evident in the cured olive's firm, even texture, and in its wonderful rich flavor. It also shows up in their price!
There are only two kinds of olives: Brine or dry cured (good) or Lye cured (bad).
The high percentage of glucosides naturally found in the raw olive makes it incredibly bitter. For the olive to become edible, the bitterness must be removed from the olive through one of several curing methods:
 Brine Curing - The fresh picked olives are simply submerged in vats of fresh water or seasoned salted brine. The liquid slowly soaks the bitterness from the olives while natural fermentation destroys most of the glucosides over a period of weeks or months. During that time, the water is regularly changed according to the preference of each producer. When the olives are aged in brine, it serves not only to remove the natural bitterness of the olives, but seasons them as well. Kalamata olives, for example, are cured in a red wine & vinegar brine which helps give them their delicious, almost wine-like flavor. Some producers begin curing in a water bath, and then later shift their olives into a seasoned brine. Water or brine curing yields a naturally cured olive, bringing out and enhancing the natural flavors of the olives.
 Dry Curing- In this method, raw olives are rubbed with (or packed in) salt and left to cure for a matter of weeks or months. The salt pulls the moisture from the olives, taking with it the olives' bitterness. The salt is then removed and the olives coated with olive oil to keep them from becoming too dry. Dry cured olives have a full, deliciously concentrated, somewhat salty flavor, with the wrinkled appearance and texture of prunes. Their intense olive flavor makes them very popular among those who like their olives full-flavored, but might be a bit too strong for some people.
 Lye Curing - This is the curing method used by almost all large, modern, commercial olive producers. Invented in Spain, lye curing is the most time & cost efficient method of curing. Unfortunately, like most "time & cost efficient" processes in the food industry, it is a shortcut, and produces the least flavorful olive. Raw olives are submerged in vats filled with an industrial lye solution. The alkaline lye quickly leaches out the glucosides from the olive. Unfortunately, the fast acting lye also takes with it much of the olive's natural flavor, leaving behind a slight chemical aftertaste. This process (cheap & efficient) accounts for almost all of the "non-gourmet" olives on supermarket shelves. If the olives in the jar were cured by the more costly natural brine or dry curing process, the package label will surely brag about it! If there are no claims about how wonderfully cured the olives are, you can safely assume that they were mechanically picked and lye cured.
 There are about a jillion varieties of olives grown in various regions around the world. Almost all of them are pressed for oil, and are seldom eaten as "table olives" by anyone other than the locals. The Greeks consume more table olives per capita than any other people - over 8 pounds per person per year! Consequently, the Greeks take their olives very seriously. Every region of the Mediterranean produces its own distinctive olive. And, of course, the locals in each area are always convinced that their particular olive is the finest.
 Kalamata (ka-la-ma-ta)- The best known Greek olive, Kalamatas are grown in the valley of Messina on the western end of the Peloponnesean Peninsula, near the town of Kalamata. Kalamatas are very attractive olives. They have a distinctive almond shape and a beautiful deep purple-black color. And, they taste every bit as good as they look. The fruits are large with an elongated asymmetric shape that is quite distinctive. While it makes excellent oil, it is chiefly grown for Greek style black olives. It is freestone with a good pit to pulp ratio. After picking, Kalamatas are hand slit, then cured in a red wine and vinegar brine, which gives them a distinctively fruity, almost wine-like flavor.
 Picholine (pitch-oh-leen)-These small, crisp green olives have a wonderful nutty taste with just a slight undertone of anise. Hand-picked and fresh brine cured, Picholine olives are some of the finest green olives you'll ever taste. If you are looking for olive trees in France, you go to Provence, in the southeastern corner of the country, along the French Riviera. The cool winters of Provence are said to yield particularly flavorful olives. Picholines are green, torpedo-shaped olives about 3-5 grams each that contain 18-20% oil. Those made in Provence are usually marinated with coriander and herbs.
 Chalkidiki (chal-ka-dee-kee) - is one of the most famous Olive varieties in the Mediterranean. Chalkidiki is a rather large peninsular, coastal area in the Northeast of Greece with picturesque bays. This area is the birthplace of Aristotle, and contains some of the finest white-sand beaches along the whole of the Aegean sea. The olive trees grow on the slopes of the Holy Mountain (Mt. Athos) in the area surrounding the Centuries Old Orthodox Christian Monasteries and reach down to the seashores of the Aegean Sea. The perfect mix of climate, soil and terrain create the ideal conditions for the Chalkidiki. Bright green, oval shaped, with a distinctive point, this large olive has a "buttery" flavor, meaty texture, with a fresh herbal aroma. This is the third most important variety used in the production of Greek table olives, accounting for about 10-20 of total production. Fruits average about 7-8 grams each and they are somewhat elongated, with a prominent tip at the bottom; the pit is slightly curved and the flesh has a good texture. They are used mainly for "Spanish" style green olives in brine.
Conservale/Conservolea (con-ser-vah-lay) -This variety is the most dominant and economically important Greek olive, being responsible for at least 50% of table olive production in Greece. It grows throughout the country from sea level up to altitudes of 2000 ft. The region around Mt. Pelion in Eastern Greece produces the finest Conservolea olives. The olive groves there spread out on the steep slopes of the mountain, and as a result the trees are not irrigated, which gives these fruits their exquisite flavor and firm texture. Fruits are round to oval-shaped, have a thin, elastic and resistant-to-shriveling skin and the pulp has a fine, consistent texture. They are medium sized, averaging about 5 grams each. These olives are picked and processed at various levels of ripeness, from the bright green ones usually made into Spanish-style green olives, to the black ones with deep violet black color which are fermented in brine and packed in vinegar.
After you gently tell Mom that you are no longer willing to eat those little black relish-tray denizens from the chemical factory, stop by Tapino and we will show you what a real olive tastes like! |
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