An olive oil war rages between Italy and Spain.
An olive oil war rages between Italy and Spain.
Italy has convinced the world that it is the king of liquid gold – hiding the fact that a significant proportion of "Made in Italy" olive oil comes from Spain.
Greece with the steel chair
Greece is basically a one big olive that Greeks live on.
In this case both wins, Italy gets a cut and Spain gets to sell their oil.
The only loses is us consumers.
Regarding olives, my favorite are Kalamata from Greece.
Olive oil will become a luxury product anyway, with Xylella and climate change harming production. Italy's olive future looks especially grim, considering we've banned cultivattion of GMOs which could aid against the parasites and droughts.
Most (all?) people I've cooked with use EVO oil for everything but deep frying, so I bet a significant fraction of olive oil used in Italy ends up ruined in a hot pan!
Same. All hail the mighty Kalamata.
Nothing described in that article even remotely resembles a war. The title is pure, shameless clickbait.
Just don't let Murica hear that 'O' word or they'd be coming with their guns blazing.
They can't burn this in their V12 that gets 1 MPG so Spain and Italy are safe.
The Arabs used to say that and look where we are now.
Morocco meanwhile laughing away watching with their olives.
That's an angle I've yet to see at upscale markets, turbo-branding the specific qualities of olive oil from Morocco.
Someone could make a fortune if they're not careful!
"Whoops! I slipped on Moroccan olive oil and hit the ground rich!"
Italy has a fraction of the territory of Spain, of which a fraction is usable in agriculture (Italy is mostly mountains), and a fraction of that can be used for Olive trees. Of course Spain has more yield, with their immense spaces and flat fields.
As for selling more or less, it's just a supply chain thing, Italian companies were better placed to sell it, but the bottle clearly states when it's Italian oil and when it's not.
These sort of antagonizing takes intra-EU are not helpful.Italy is 60% of the size of Spain and has a similar ratio of arable land (27.1 vs 27.9% per Wikipedia, Spain is also quite mountainous). Doesn't really invalidate the point in your comment, but I expected a bigger difference when comparing "immense spaces and flat fields"to a mostly mountainous fraction of the territory
Large parts of spain are almost desert though
Which is the perfect climate to grow olive trees. The more arid, the better.
One of the world's biggest olive producers is Tunisia, where you have actual desert. Anything that can capture a little of the humidity, like valleys in between hills, they plant olive trees. If it has a little more water it's dates.
A lot of the olives are grown in North Africa, then shipped to Italy. There they are turned into Italian olive oil.