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<pre>the following site from Italy (http://www.taggiasca.com/kyle.htm)
mentions the relationship between oil quality and temperature. Although
it is only an opinion, it would be useful to have some data.
"In any case, the best oils are from the cooler parts of the olive
range, where the trees have to struggle to get out the crop -- not so
much because it's good for them to struggle (though this probably does
help, just as it does with grape vines) as because the cooler
temperatures keep the olives from suffering temperature shock after
they're harvested, which tends to make the oil heavier. People are
experimenting with refrigeration units in southern Italy, with
interesting results, though things haven't reached the commercial stage yet."
"The problem is temperature, I heard at an olive oil conference last
year -- it's too hot in the south, when the olives ripen, and the
temperatures that the picked olives are subjected to during storage and
pressing result in heavy-tasting oils. This was until recently; South
Italian producers have begun to experiment with refrigeration and their
oils are improving dramatically -- they're not yet to the level of the
best Tuscan and Ligurian, but they're getting there"

And adulteration
"Why would these people be unhappy? They're being undercut through
crafty use of an EEC food production loophole, according to which an
olive oil imported from outside the EEC (North Africa,for example) can
be sold as EEC oil if it's cut with locally produced oil following its
importation. All the unscrupulous producer has is buy cheap foreign oil
for a hundred lire per liter, filter it, blend in some local oil, and
voila' -- locally produced extra virgin oil! It's not going to be as
good as what really is local, of course, but how's the consumer to
distinguish between two bottles from the same town without buying both
and tasting them? The consumer who gets burned will look elsewhere, and
likely settle on Greek or Spanish"

Roger Farquhar Hunter Valley

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