In Defense of 'Black Fruity'

On the occa­sion of the Parisian explo­ration of new oils held last month, Olio Nuovo Days, the French asso­ci­a­tion Afidol orga­nized a con­fer­ence on the theme ​“Black Fruity.”

The con­fer­ence was led by Afidol pres­i­dent Olivier Nasles who dis­cussed the unpop­u­lar taste of the oil known in France as Fruité Noir and the con­tro­versy sur­round­ing its pro­duc­tion.

According to a 2008 European reg­u­la­tion, oils pro­duced from ripe olives shouldn’t hold the des­ig­na­tion ​‘fruity’ as its def­i­n­i­tion doesn’t apply to the pro­duc­tion method used to obtain the clas­sic oil. Today, the term goût à l’ancienne (tra­di­tional) or olives mâturées (matured olives) are pre­ferred.

A black fruity vir­gin oil derives from an ances­tral tra­di­tion still main­tained to date in the Provence region of France, though it is also known to exist in other Mediterranean regions. The oil is obtained from olives vol­un­tar­ily fer­mented through a con­trolled and super­vised stor­age dur­ing four to eight days before extrac­tion.

For this process, olives must be of unques­tion­able qual­ity and notably undam­aged by the olive fly. The oil releases fla­vors of cacao, mush­room, vanilla, sour­dough bread or even can­did fruits, and no bit­ter­ness is noted.

The pur­pose of the fer­men­ta­tion is to lose the ini­tial ardence of the olive oil by break­ing veg­e­tal notes and, by doing so, to develop dif­fer­ent aro­mas that are milder, rounder and longer on the palate. However, its fusty fla­vor arouses con­tro­versy since fusti­ness is also a com­mon defect caused by the unin­ten­tional fer­men­ta­tion that hap­pens when olives wait too long before being milled and begin to decom­pose.

“Taste has a reg­u­la­tory value. Olive oil is the only prod­uct world­wide that must pass before a panel test to be con­sid­ered edi­ble. They are telling us that a his­tor­i­cal taste is not mar­ketable nor con­sum­able,” said Nasles, who believes that fusti­ness doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean defec­tive if it’s well con­trolled.

“Clearly, if the pro­ce­dure is unsu­per­vised, it pro­duces defec­tive oils but with today’s mod­ern­ized meth­ods, farm­ers can mas­ter the qual­ity of the oil,” said Nasles who said he has noted a ​“gen­eral men­tal block against the fusty taste.”

And the process did­n’t orig­i­nate in France. ​“Black fruity is not a French typ­i­cal­ity, stor­ing olives in the mill is a Mediterranean tra­di­tion that began cen­turies ago,” Nasles said.

The pro­duc­tion method was wide­spread in the past, how­ever, with the imple­men­ta­tion of mod­ern equip­ment in the 1970s, grow­ers started press­ing their olives ear­lier, thus pro­duc­ing the green fruity. As a result, and with the new European norms, con­trolled fer­men­ta­tion prior to olive press­ing was frowned upon and black fruity became a less wanted pro­duce.

Refusing to con­form to a European uni­for­mity and to save a tra­di­tional know-how, the AOP Union and Afidol fought suc­cess­fully to val­i­date the pro­ce­dure.

“The pur­pose of this con­fer­ence is not to defend this par­tic­u­lar taste but rather to clar­ify any mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion around it and to under­line the dog­ma­tism of the panel test that suf­fo­cates some pro­duc­ers with their stan­dard­iza­tions,” said Nasles.

During the dis­cus­sions, four black fruity vir­gin oils were tasted by the audi­ence com­posed of inter­na­tional pro­duc­ers and experts. The oils pro­duced by the French mills Castelines, Moulin à Huile Margier and Le Carré des Huiles were either well received for their uncom­mon and par­tic­u­lar taste or cat­e­gor­i­cally rejected by those favor­ing a spe­cific fla­vor spec­trum.

“The black fruity is our DNA, our his­tor­i­cal her­itage. What upsets me is the gen­eral dis­dain for this ances­tral tra­di­tion which is the root of what is today known as the green fruity. It is the mother of all oils,” con­cluded Nasles.

• Afidol


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