Fairway Markets' Steven Jenkins on Olive Oil

I decided to split up Steven Jenkins’ email response to me and the essay that he sent me into two posts. I originally wrote to Fairway Markets inquiring more information about the Organic Olive Oil I buy and I received an impassioned response from their esteemed head buyer, Steven Jenkins, who is arguably the most informed cheese and oil man in the entire United States.

Jenkins has been in the cheese business since way before I was born. His first book Cheese Primer was published in November 1996 and to date it has been reprinted more than ten times. Cheese Primer was awarded a James Beard Foundation Award in 1997. He is also an active member of the American Cheese Society, and a regular contributor to The Splendid Table on National Public Radio. Jenkins had another book published in 2008, The Food Life, written with the esteemed Mitchell London.

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ON OLIVE OIL

Sheer, absolute and tiresome rubbish, all this misinformation and nonsense I read on innumerable internet sites about olive oil. Truly, I despair of the worldwide stranglehold the internet has us in, such a muddle of cant and blather, and one can only imagine the mess we’re in if all of life’s other subjects are treated so poorly.

Yes, this is a rant. I’ve been holding off for months, but I can’t hold it back any longer. I thought I’d wait until most of the new oils are in, the 2010 and early ’11 pressings. Don’t want all that negativity in the air while these sweet and innocent, golden and virid liquid kisses are wafting about.

The last fifteen years, and deeper the last six or eight, I have been immersed literally and figuratively in olive oil in much the same manner as with my concentration for cheese starting in the mid-‘70’s. I know of which I speak, and I know also if I feel like I have to announce such a thing I’m going to sound like a jerk. I have forgotten more about olive oil than anybody in the business knows. Anybody. Any chef, any chemist, importer, retailer or worldly academic whose jaunty hobby is food, travel, and, say, Mediterranean history. I have forgotten more than they will ever know. The way I can prove it is just you come to any of the Fairway Markets and spend a few hours looking at and tasting my olive oils, and reading their signs and the labels on the bottles and tins. After a few visits, each an investment of hours-long perusal and study, you will be able to proclaim that you yourself are more knowledgeable about olive oil than just about anybody drawing breath. Certainly anyone who chose to educate himself via the internet. That being said, the only way you would be able to ascend to my lofty level of command is to travel to each of the groves and mills that are responsible for the oils I import for my Fairways. Travel to them during all seasons, not just the autumnal culmination of each grove’s raison d’etre. Walk the rows of olive trees. Palpate the tree bark and leaves, and the soil in which the trees reside and consume; breath the air in which the trees respire; turn your face up into the sun for extended contemplative periods, as do the olive trees’ leaves, and talk with the farmers and the mill workers. Or, rather, listen. Talk, and then listen. Listen, listen.

The only more ignorant information than that from the internet is found in the weigh-ins and replies submitted by the readers of these websites that purport to be founts of authority.

There is no ‘best’ olive oil. Olive oil, as with any other sensory thing, is a matter of taste. ‘A chacun son gout’ – to each his own taste, it is said among French people. A Turk will have strong emotional attachment to the olive oil from his family’s groves, and a Kiwi will feel no less adoration for his. But neither is better than the other. Nor does the price of the two oils have any bearing on ‘good, better, best’. A professional such as myself may opine that the Turkish source is an oil of bitter and/or bland organoleptic sensation, and that the NZ source has an undeniable tomato and citrus tang to it. But one cannot and should not take away from a professional’s articulation of an oil’s properties any cumulative positive or negative value. Again, ‘a chacun son gout’. The professional will attempt to dazzle the listener or reader with words that take on objectivity, rococo and filigree, smoke and mirrors. The daughter of a grove’s patron will similarly attempt to impress, to elevate her family’s oil to mythic status via hyperbole. But none of it means a thing, neither the clinical authority of the professional nor the poesy of the owner of the very soil of the grove. It is all just one person’s opinion, mine included.

But one thing I do know about olive oil that is unassailable, and cannot be said to be a product of prejudice or emotion: There is a lot of bad olive oil out there. And there is probably some of it in your kitchen right this moment. Unless, of course, you are one of my habitual customers.

There is no country that can be said to produce ‘the best’ olive oil. I have always said the same about cheese. The country in which a grove resides is vastly less cardinal than the specific region of it; or indeed the sub-region. Or the sloping terraced hillside or ridge-like spine, or rock-strewn stretch of a particular neighborhood of that sub-region. And then -- and then more important is how the trees were tended, when the olives were harvested, what is the name of the olive involved in the soon-to-be-derived oil. More than one variety? Which? How were they taken from the tree? Were they shaken down and did they bounce on the ground and mix with the soil, and thereby become bruised and soiled? Or were they hand-stripped by workers on ladders wearing hollow goat’s horns on their fingers, or modern plastic-molded goat’s horn-like claws, and were they ripe or were they under-ripe those olives falling into basket or bucket, or were they gently bouncing on nylon nets carefully arranged and shrouded around each tree? Were they then taken immediately to the local mill where they were culled of all or most of the branches and twigs and leaves that were stripped away with them, and were they weighed and then pressed before the olives began to get stale and ferment and change utterly from the crisp and spotted, jewel-like, living nuggets they were to the mushy, lifeless and soggy lumps they are now? Were there obvious olive-fly boreholes in the olives? More than one? Was there any evidence of a filmy mold upon any of them? Did anyone notice how many leaves fell into the press along with the olives? Those leaves will affect the flavor, you know; leaves are chlorophyll and chlorophyll is not without taste, not to mention color. An oil’s viridity can be directly related to an overabundance of leaves in the press, and still those dunderheads on the internet that profess to know something about olive oil will attest to an oil’s wonderfulness being directly related to how green it is.

All of these things matter. All of these things determine the fragrances of an olive oil, the odors of it, too, if it has been created carelessly; the texture of an olive oil, that is, the mouth-feel, the way an oil feels on your tongue and on the roof of your mouth and the back of your throat. The way the ardence, the power, of an olive oil attacks your palate, the taste buds on the outside edge of your tongue, and the sensory buds high in your nasal passages that fire as you exhale through your nose across the slurry that has slid down the back of your throat, and the incipient bitterness that often arises on the back of your tongue at the approach of an early-harvest oil, the glucosides of green olives making themselves known, a challenge to all but the most enthusiastic of olive oil-lovers, that adult bitterness that thrills us like horehound, Campari, licorice or absinthe. And finally the frequent and cherished peppercorn sensation that some oils offer -- fresh-ground black and sometimes green peppercorns, so diametrically opposed to some oils’ sweetness on the finish, a finish like honey, like unsalted butter.

All of these things matter. And none of them can be said to come more or less from any specific oil. Unless, of course, you want to. Unless you believe it. Because then it is there. And that oil is the one that thrills you. After all, isn’t that the point?

Fairway Market Wrote Me Back!!!

I wrote in my recent vinaigrette post that my Fairway olive oil came from Puglia in Italy. I reached out to Fairway for more information but wrote that they had not responded. Well bust my buttons if I didn’t open my inbox on Saturday morning to find an email from Steven Jenkins. Jenkins, whose exact title (head buyer and VP?) I am not exactly sure except that he is now pledged to be my personal grocer, was highly dismayed that I had not received his original email response. He quickly forwarded it to me along with 4 very impassioned essays about olive oil and cheese with olive oil and barreled versus non-barreled olive oil. I was struck by the vigor and volume of his words. And Jenkins kindly said that I could run them here! Awesome.

As I began to copy his words into the blog format to show the world the time and care that Fairway takes in responding to the questions of even the smallest blogger, it hit me. Oh. My. God. This man espousing olive oil and cheese knowledge to me was the truly incredible cheese monger of Fairway Markets; the man that David Kamp in his eloquent The United States of Arugula calls “America’s foremost cheese expert”. Jenkins has been in the cheese business since way before I was born. His first book Cheese Primer was published in November 1996 and to date it has been reprinted more than ten times. Cheese Primer was awarded a James Beard Foundation Award in 1997. He is also an active member of the American Cheese Society, and a regular contributor to The Splendid Table on National Public Radio. Jenkins had another book published in 2008, The Food Life, written with the esteemed Mitchell London.

It is my great pleasure to publish the words of Steven Jenkins. First the email I received and then in a second post, his essay on olive oil which I found so compelling. Who gets a letter like this when they email the grocery store?? I am a lucky gal.

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Hey there Christa

First, thanks for appreciating the work we do here. Makes a lot of sense, and makes us really happy.
As for the olive oil, I first want you to understand that there are two kinds of olive oil. There is artisanal-production olive oil, and there is mass-production olive oil. Almost all artisanal-production olive oils are extraordinarily good. Almost all mass-production olive oils are not so good. In fact, most of them are execrable. Oxidized. Killed by fluorescent lights. Stale. Musty. Made from low-quality olives. To stock decent locally distributed olive oils (mass-production) requires that a buyer with expertise (such as ME) be involved. This is extremely rare around town and around the country.

Fairway is one of the few stores that stocks artisanal production olive oils. I import the most remarkable array of artisanal olive oils in the entire history of the industry. No other store or importer comes close to the range and selection here.

Our organic oil with the Fairway label is a blend of Umbrian oils and Pugliese oils, about 50/50. This is nonetheless NOT artisanal-production olive oil. But it IS olive oil from a family I know intimately and have visited and done business with for 16 years, exclusively. I am positive that there is no other private-label oil anywhere that is as fresh, tasty and expensively inexpensive as ours. It is my pride and joy. I pay a lot for this mass-production oil, because of its quality, and I charge very little commensurately. The farmers involved in my (our) private-label oil are around six for the Umbrian constituent, and another six or eight for the Pugliese constituent. Their oil, each year, is bought by another family whose business is blending these oils and then selling them to people like me. The oil is harvested and pressed (mulched and centrifuged, actually) at Spoleto, a mill just outside of the Umbrian town, and at Martina Franca, another pretty town in north-central Puglia. this Pugliese oil is pumped under pressure into stainless steel tanker trucks and is delivered to Umbria (Spoleto) where it is blended with the local Umbrian oil, bottled (again, under pressure) and shipped to me via the port at Genoa.
I create the flavor profile for it by tasting quite a few samples of each harvest's October/November pressing from both regions -- Umbria and Puglia.

You have to contrast this procedure of mine with the non-procedure for the two-dozen or so 'artisanal-production' olive oils I import as well, and with the 13 barrel oils I import in 200kg barrels each from a very specific farmer with whom I have been doing business for, again, almost 16 years. I am loyal, and I am very fond of each of my 13 (14! -- the Baena is moving to private-label! Very exciting for us!) Barrel oils. This aforementioned 'non-procedure' is that I BUY THE PRESSING HOWEVER IT TASTES FROM THE MOST RECENT HARVEST AND PRESSING. The farmer has it trucked to the nearest port, and that's it. I receive it at Port Elizabeth (NJ), and that's the end. Until you buy it.

So what you are choosing, that is, the oil YOU use at home, is the finest mass-production private-label olive oil on the face of the earth. That being said, I am urging you to taste the barrel oils, each of which is somewhat more expensive than the organic Umbrian/Pugliese blend you have been devoted to, but that are still the greatest value in our entire store. The greatest value in the entire store. You're paying, what 10 or 11 dollars for the organic. Awfully good olive oil. I am urging you to spend a few dollars more for any one of the 14 barrel oils, two of which are certified organic (Luque/Andalusia and Pugliese) for olive oil that should knock your socks off. And after you have luxuriated in all of my barrel oils I will graduate you to any of the 3 dozen exclusively-imported artisanal HALF-LITERS of generations-old mills and families of farmers from specific regions in Spain, Italy and France. Very expensive olive oil, but magical substances, each of them. And nobody imports them but Fairway.

sj

If you search for happiness, don't go looking farther than your own back yard.

We finally found time today to go to Whole Foods. I mentioned a few days ago that I had been in search of some organic peanut oil. Well I decided that if I was going to go to Whole Foods for one item, I would just get everything there.

I had visions of isles of prefect and organic produce, all varieties of blissful fruits and vegetables. I expected 10 different varieties of organic tortillas and organic cheese to write home to my parents about. And I kind of found it, but I kind of didn't at the same time.

I did find beautiful fruits and veggies. Everything seemed to have a coat of gloss paint on it. But I was surprised to see that half of the produce was conventional and the other half organic. I did like that the store labels items that are local. Probably there are local varieties at Fairway, but they don't label them, so who will ever know?

I am a store brand shopper. I always try to buy everything from the store brand at Fairway, because it is cheaper and I think very high quality. Many of my friends do the same thing, I know the Fairway brand sells faster and so those goods are fresher. The Fairway brand is always clearly labeled as to whether the items are organic or not. At Whole Foods, I always thought that the 365 brand was always organic. It is not. And there were times that I found it hard to find the organic labeling on the packaging. Maybe that was just because I was looking for the label of organic and it wasn't there.

The most amazing thing though??? Price. I discovered that Whole Foods was no more expensive or less expensive than Fairway. I was SHOCKED about that. Mostly because I have said that I felt that Fairway was such an affordable grocery store, and at the same time I have been convinced that Whole Foods was so expensive. And maybe Fairway's conventional items are less expensive. But when it comes to organics, the brands are identical and the price is nearly identical. Some things you pay 10 cents more for other you pay 10 cents less. It is a wash.

I am happy with everything that I bought at Whole Foods. There are a couple of items and brands that they carry that I cannot find anywhere else. so I will probably try to run over during a lunch break to buy a bottle of prized oil or a great cheese. but I don't need to go out of my way to get all my groceries at Whole Foods. Heck, Fairway has a parking lot. And to me that is huge!

But I think the thing that stood out the most to me was that all the brands of organic items were exactly identical. Whole Foods did not have an expanded selection that was apparent to me. That says to me what I have heard for a long time. That there really aren't as many organic options in this country. For the millions of people in this country only a small percentage can eat food that is not conventionally grown. Not because of price, but because there is not enough supply. But my generation is coming. Our demand of organic food is growing because we are all seeing the effects of the 'modern' way of life. So much progress has been made recently, but we have a long way to go before we can proclaim that every child in this country has access to foods that have been created at every level in a way that preserves the land for their future.