Maltese and Italian olive oil tastings

Over the last eight years we have been pleased to be able to hold tastings of extra virgin olive oils from Italy and Greece in London, cities in the east of England such as Cambridge and Norwich and also in the Umbria and Marche regions of Italy.

The tastings we hold have always proved popular and over the years we have refined our tastings to be more centred not just on clients interested in learning more about fine olive oils but also to offer courses with a special emphasis to further educate professional olive oil producers.

Our tasting events in London and the UK were always only able to offer olive oil appreciation courses which focused on the general public but of course in Italy we were able to include professionals. We have found that many olive oil producers work hard at cultivating and picking their olives for milling but in many cases they were not that aware of how their finished extra virgin olive should taste and smell. Our experts were able to address this lack of knowledge and are able to help them gain and in depth knowledge of how the milling process affects their finished oil.

In the past two years we have been working with Slow Food groups in the Mediterranean region to set up a dedicated Mediterranean olive oil academy which will offer similar tastings events and courses that we hold in Italy and the UK on the Island of Malta. Malta is geographically in the centre of the Mediterranean and also English and Italian are widely spoken so it makes the perfect base of a venue which can attract clients and producers from across the region.

Olivaverde has worked with the Mediterranean olive oil academy to grow our contacts with olive oil producers on the Island and held our first small tasting event in Malta in July this year. Our Sicilian olive oil expert Salvatore Romano hosted the event at a lovely venue and setting in Madliena which was attended by fourteen guests and we tasted six extra virgin olive oils from Puglia and Marche in eastern Italy, Sicily, Greece, Spain and of course Malta, where we tried a blended Maltese olive oil and a Maltese oil made solely from the Maltese Bidni indigenous olive variety.

We now will be back in Malta in September for the olive harvest, we have a special event at the 5 star Corinthia san Anton hotel in October featuring Maltese oils and produce and we are planning a dedicated olive oil festival with producers from across the Mediterranean next April.