Olive Center's Sensory Course Set for June

The UC Davis Olive Center has announced June 14 to 17 as the 2016 dates for their Sensory Evaluation of Olive Oil Certificate Course. Held at the Robert Mondavi Silverado Sensory Theater, the course is open to pro­fes­sion­als and oth­ers inter­ested in a more thor­ough under­stand­ing of how to eval­u­ate olive oil.

The pro­gram is spear­headed by Dan Flynn, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the UC Davis Olive Center. Through his efforts, the Center is con­sid­ered a leader in inter­na­tional olive research and edu­ca­tion. He also over­sees pro­duc­tion of UC Davis Olive Oil and other olive prod­ucts that help sup­port the cen­ter. Flynn is enthu­si­as­tic about this year’s pro­gram. The course employs advanced sen­sory soft­ware and a highly respected fac­ulty of sen­sory, chem­istry, and pol­icy experts, he said.
See Also:UC Davis Sensory Evaluation of Olive Oil Certification Course
​“The soft­ware allows par­tic­i­pants to bring in tablets or lap­tops and to enter assess­ments directly into the com­puter. The info goes into the Cloud, and the entire audi­ence can see how their eval­u­a­tions com­pare. It’s a really well-inte­grated course.”

This year, along with highly respected sen­sory sci­en­tist and panel leader Sue Langstaff (“Her par­tic­i­pa­tion, alone, makes our course stand out from most in the world,” said Flynn) and Selina Wang, who over­sees research for the Olive Oil Center, the panel will fea­ture Deborah Madison, the 2016 win­ner of the James Beard Foundation Cookbook Hall of Fame honor. ​“She’s a leg­end in the cook­book and healthy food cook­ing world and she’s a true author­ity on olive oil,” Flynn said.

Madison’s pre­sen­ta­tion is likely to include tast­ings and valu­able advice about how to pair foods with olive oil and how to use them to bring out the best in var­i­ous ingre­di­ents. Other com­po­nents of the four-day class include learn­ing about the sci­ence of tast­ing, eval­u­at­ing more than 60 oils using offi­cial blue tast­ing glasses, receiv­ing train­ing designed for panel mem­bers, and more with all par­tic­i­pants receiv­ing a Master Certificate upon course com­ple­tion.

“We’re not claim­ing that by going through this course you’re going to become an instant expert but you will def­i­nitely know how to eval­u­ate olive oil qual­ity,” said Flynn.

• Sensory Evaluation of Olive Oil Certificate Course