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Boutique olive oils are more complex than their mass-produced counterparts and can have a range of flavors both subtle and strong. Carter & Cavero imports its oils directly from carefully vetted vendors in Europe, Australia, and California. Visitors at Carter & Cavero's Red Bank store are encouraged to try before they buy. With the first location, in Red Bank, New Jersey, flourishing, Carter & Cavero opened a second shop in Long Branch in summer 2009. Aside from bottled-on-site oils, Carter & Cavero offers vinegars, pestos, and other culinary delights perfect for gifts. |
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Inside a picturesque storefront in Red Bank, New Jersey, people mill about with plastic cups in front of a wall of spigoted barrels. According to the barrels’ identifying description cards, the 2009 Leccino features “grassy tones, almonds, with a smooth aftertaste of tropical fruits.” This year’s Hojiblanca has a “ripe fruity aroma with a strong presence of grass and apple,” as well as a “slightly peppery aftertaste with hints of almond.” The liquids being poured at this tasting are as golden as a riesling but far more slippery. Tap into the new fountain of culinary chic: boutique olive oil.
“The key to olive oil is freshness,” says Chris Ortiz, who runs a mill near Jaén, Spain, and is one of the four partners in Carter & Cavero Old World Olive Oil, a two-year-old outfit he founded with a lawyer from New Jersey (Chris Wall), a certified olive-oil sommelier (César Colliga, who is also the author of the aforementioned organoleptic descriptions), and a marketer in Manhattan (Sam Berg). They have banded together, they say, out of “a desire to create a business that stands for everything that is not artificial, mass-produced, common or mainstream.”
At blond-wood-lined stores in Red Bank and, as of May 2009, at Pier Village in Long Branch, New Jersey, Carter & Cavero is dispensing not only high-quality, direct-imported olive oils, but a kind of Mediterranean wisdom and lifestyle. Like the late Napa vintner Robert Mondavi, who revolutionized how Americans think about wine, the Carter & Cavero crew hopes to do the same for olive oil.
Although the cholesterol-free, soluble wonder fat has been gaining in popularity in the United States for the past two decades—per the North American Olive Oil Association, imports jumped by 8,606,661 gallons between 2006 and 2008—many consumers have only recently begun to think of olive oil as a boutique product offering a range of delicate flavors.
“They come in and say they never realized there are so many varieties of olives,” Ortiz told RL in a recent interview. “We have seventeen, which is really only a small sample. You start by having them taste a little bit of everything. By categorizing it all organoleptically, we can make matches with their preferences.” And, he adds, it’s “reassuring that they can try before they buy”—and go home with the very product they tasted.
Such value has been attached to olive oil that safeguards against fraud were instituted as early as the Roman era. As Tom Mueller reported in an alarming 2007 New Yorker article, even today—because of lax inspection, a diffuse supply chain, and what critics say are unenforceable regulations—substitution and doctoring with lesser-quality oils is rampant. By contrast, Carter & Cavero buys directly from its sources: small estates, often family-owned, throughout Spain, Italy, France, Greece, Australia, and California. “Almost all of our producers and suppliers are award winners,” notes Ortiz. “What’s more, when we buy, we’re buying the exact batch that won the award.”
A quality olive oil is unmistakable, says Ortiz, who inherited his uncle’s passion and took over his mill in Spain in 1999. “An intensive green [unripened] oil smells like green leaf or just-cut grass, almonds, and artichokes,” he explains. When it tends toward sweet, “you find more banana, more ripe fruits.” Unlike wines, which are judged in part on their color, the oil’s hue offers little clue as to how it will taste. Nor does the specific type of olive used, as the varieties adapt to local conditions (the terroir, to extend the wine parlance). Most important, the oil’s attributes and aroma should be in balance: “The olive oil should not shock you,” adds Colliga. “But surprise you, yes.”
Not all store-bought olive oils are created equal. “Extra virgin” refers to the olives’ first cold pressing; “virgin” is also produced without heat or additives, but bears a slightly higher acidity content (still less than two percent, as regulated by the International Olive Council). “Right now the problem is that the terminology that is approved to describe olive oil is horrible,” says Ortiz. For example, what’s billed as “pure” olive oil is actually refined—but this is not to say elegant. It means the oil has been processed chemically to produce a neutral liquid, and then a bit of extra-virgin is added for a hint of flavor. “It’s extremely misleading,” he says.
Another caveat lector? Labels often trumpet their “cold-pressed” contents, but what today passes for cold pressing is anything below body temperature, which is warmer than traditional methods. The olives are smashed and then spun at 3,000 rpms in a horizontal centrifuge, which separates the solids and the water from the oil. The hotter the fruit during pressing, the more skin and fruit is extracted, and the greater the yield. True cold pressing—on the order of 60º F—results in a purer oil in smaller amounts.
Once it’s bottled, olive oil has a life span of about a year. “So if in Spain you were bottling in March or April, and shipping to the United States by May, by the time the oil got to the distributor’s warehouses and onto shelves, you were consuming oils that were maybe eight, nine, ten months old,” says Ortiz. “But everything that we’re selling from Europe is from this season’s harvest.”
Olive oil is not only a healthier substitute for saturated fats like butter, it has nutritional value built in. Recently scientific attention has turned to the antioxidant properties of the oil’s polyphenols—also found in tea, coffee, some nuts and seeds, soy products, and chocolate—which may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and neurodegenerative disorders.
As oils age, they start to deteriorate, along with their nutritional value and vitamin content. “Polyphenol count is extremely high right after an oil is produced,” says Ortiz. “If you’re consuming it for health reasons, you should spend a little extra to find that brand that tastes fresh, tastes great.” And as freshness and quality increase, so does flavor, so you can use less. Ortiz, for one, thinks there might be something to the presence of olive oil in the notoriously healthy Mediterranean diet: “My uncle, who’s 82 now, takes a spoonful every morning.”
Carter & Cavero’s wide range of olive offerings ensures even daily consumption won’t get boring. “We are constantly trying things out,” says Ortiz, referring to a line of fused oils produced by adding tasty complements during milling. (Current offerings include garlic, Meyer lemon, basil, Persian lime, blood orange, white truffle, chipotle, and porcini infusions.) The stores also sell infused vinegars, hand-harvested sea salts, pestos, and spreads, as well as olive-wood serving utensils, oil-juiced cosmetics, and more.
The straight estate-bottled oil is still the star, but even the expert is hard-pressed to pick just one favorite. “I think they are all unique and have something to offer,” says Colliga. “Right now I would choose the Spanish Hojiblanca or the Italian Frantoio. Both are amazing olive oils, highly respected by the connoisseur, but at the same time great for someone who wants to try a real boutique olive oil. Most people who try them say that it is impossible that these flavors can be obtained just by crushing olives, but in fact that is the only ingredient of an amazing oil—olives and pressure.”
Carter & Cavero Old World Olive Oil Company will have a boutique tent at the holiday fair in NYC’s Bryant Park this season. For information and ordering year round, visit their website at Carterandcavero.com.
Sarah P. Hanson is a New York–based writer and editor at Assouline Publishing.
Photography credits:
- Robin Macdougall
- David Noton
- Courtesy Carter & Cavero Old World Olive Oils
- Courtesy Carter & Cavero Old World Olive Oils
- Courtesy Carter & Cavero Old World Olive Oils
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