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<pre>I read carefully your interesting message.
I would give you my personal opinion. I live in Bari (the biggest
producing area of Italy) and I am professionally deeply
introduced in the olive oil market and continuosly in touch with
some of the biggest italian company producer of olive oil (extra,
virgen, etc.).
I also spend a lot of my time in Spain in the Jaen area, which is
the biggest world area of olive oil production.

You are on right when you say that there is a bad culture of
olive oil. It exists in Italy and Spain and all over the world.
There are italians or spanish people that do not know the
diffrence between extra virgen and virgen oil. That's amazing if
we consider that together Italy and Spain produce something like
the 50 - 60% of world production!
So it should be not a big surprise whether english or american
people do the same.

Actually, Spain has done big infrastructural investment to
modernize its production (both on the side of trees plants and on
the machinary side). To understand that, every one who is really
interested in the argument should visit Jaen, Baeza, Ubeda,
Linares, Mancha Real, etc.
Quality that has been one of the biggest problem of spanish oil
is improving much and much. Quality defects of spanish olive oil
were mainly due to the enormous quantity that in few weeks
concentrate in the "almazaras", expecting to be worked. I am
talking of mountains of olives, really mountains.
Also it should be considered that recently the storage of olive
oil is improved very much.

Italy has a big market power. Quality is generally good also
because of the better rules that producers respect: olives are
worked within 24 hours their picking and are stored in big box of
200-300 kg each one (and not leaved on the ground), oil is stored
and then moved to new tank often (first time is after 20-30 days
the production, then each 40 - 50 days), and so on.

Italy buy a lot of Spanish Olive Oil. May be this year it will be
the opposite because of the bad production of Spain and the big
production of Italy. (Hay personas en Jaen que ablan de 700 ptas
Kg en Navidad).

Culture of olive oil is something that should not belong to
industry, but to non profit advertisement campaign pubblished by
the local Authority. That's my opinion. Industry should always
offer good products, always explaining on the label the exact
origin of the products, together with the explanation of the way
of producing.
How many people knows that sunflower oil or other seed oil is
obtained with benzene (solvent), the same of orujo?

Arguments to talk about are many. I hope to come back to write
again.

Regards

Stefano Cavicchia
Studio Associato L'Abbate & Cavicchia
Dottori Commercialisti
Via Carulli, 126
70121 BARI
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