Hi All,

I thought you might be interested in hearing the experience of Julie and
myself.

We were fortunate enough to invited to the first official course run in
South Africa on Olive Oil Grading.

It was run by Dr. Luciano Scarselli from Tuscany and followed the format
that they use to train the testers who do the official grading of Olive Oils
in Tuscany.

He brought with him a selection of oils from all over, both good, bad and
very bad.

The main thrust of the course was to get us to start distinguishing the
various smells and tastes that they use to do their grading and that in
itself was quite a daunting process. We had to start learning a complete new
vocabulary of descriptions e.g.

The bad characteristics are classified as follows

Winey
Coarse
Metallic
Mouldy
Dreggy
Fusty
Rancid

Some of them are obvious and some not, for example "Fusty" took us a while
until he produced a sample specifically formulated to demonstrate this smell
(Old Socks is the closest I can use to describe it)

We also had to learn various other smells such as Cucumber (An oil that has
been too long in a tin)

The other challenge was to keep our palettes working after tasting 15 oils
in a day. As one member of the coarse put it we were "Well Oiled" by the end
of the day.

If there is sufficient interest I would be happy to put together a brief
overview of the course and the things we were taught, others in the now
would be welcome to contribute and comment. It could be useful and
interesting to those who would like to know more about how to taste in a
more structured way.

We are now planning to get a small group together to go to Italy and get
more thoroughly trained so that we can have a panel operating in South
Africa that can provide a grading for the oils that we produce.

It was very interesting for us to try the oils that the trainer brought with
him, and despite his obvious bias for the Tuscan oils he was quite
complementary about the South African oils that we provided for him to
taste.

Let me know if you would like me to put something together in more detail

Regards

Mike and Julie (Novice - partially trained oil tasters)