Speaker A
What is the biggest lie we've been told about olive oil all these years? The food industry has conditioned us for 30 years to accept standardization.
Expert Alexis Munos reveals the biggest lies about olive oil, exposing industry myths and emphasizing quality, nature, and true production methods.
Key Takeaways
- Most supermarket olive oils are bulk blends with compromised quality and hidden origins.
- Quality olive oil depends on fruit ripeness, careful handling, and respect for natural processes.
- Marketing often misleads consumers about olive oil origin and quality.
- True expertise in olive oil involves deep knowledge of agriculture, production, and sensory evaluation.
- Consumers should be more informed and critical when choosing olive oil.
What the video covers
- The food industry has conditioned consumers for 30 years to accept standardized, low-quality olive oils often extracted with harmful solvents like hexane.
- Country or region branding does not determine olive oil quality; marketing often obscures the true origin and quality of oils sold in stores.
- Over 90% of olive oils sold worldwide in supermarkets and organic stores are bulk blends from large producers, not artisanal or region-specific oils.
- Quality depends largely on pre-mill factors, with 60% of olive oil quality determined before pressing, including fruit ripeness and handling.
- Modern technology allows extraction of the fruit’s quintessence, but many commercial oils lack authenticity and flavor.
- Consumers often buy olive oil out of habit without questioning origin or quality, influenced by brand loyalty and marketing.
- Organic labeling does not guarantee good quality olive oil; many organic oils still come from bulk blends and lack flavor.
- True olive oil expertise involves understanding the tree, soil, and environment, linking gastronomic excellence with respect for nature.
- Alexis Munos works with Michelin-starred chefs and promotes education to help consumers appreciate authentic, high-quality olive oils.
- The video encourages viewers to subscribe for more expert insights and to rethink their olive oil choices.
Chapters
- 00:00The Biggest Lies About Olive Oil
- 05:05Industry Knowledge and Marketing Tricks
- 10:49Advances in Olive Oil Extraction Technology
- 16:37Fraud and Quality Challenges in Olive Oil
- 21:55Debunking Regional Quality Myths
- 27:11Lipogenesis and Olive Ripeness
- 32:56Organic Olive Oil: What It Really Means
- 38:00Global Olive Oil Production and Imports
- 43:02Consumer Education and Olive Oil Appreciation
- 52:54Expert Insights and Final Thoughts
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
They inject hexane to extract the maximum amount of fat. It’s a solvent, it's highly carcinogenic.
Speaker A
So what you're telling us is that by buying this brand of olive oil, we're ingesting toxic products.
Speaker A
Yes, ma'am. It’s a tree that is endowed with exceptional intelligence and cellular memory. But a black olive is just a green olive that has ripened.
Speaker A
But you know, I think a lot of people aren't aware of that. The majority, because people have become disconnected from nature. The olive is the only fruit that can be pressed when it is not ripe. You're going to get an incredible load of
Speaker A
polyphenols. So these are the olive oils that the greatest starred chefs ask you for.
Speaker A
I was in Cappadocia, I was in Greece, I was in the Maghreb, in Meknes, in Fez, in Algeria, in Tunisia where I built a mill. I saw this tree that went through the centuries, diseases, epidemics, and fed the population so simply. The idea
Speaker A
is to do a blind tasting. It’s very oily, it has no nose. It’s a vulgar blend. Really, what I tasted is not good at all.
Speaker A
It was this one. I think it’s one of the best-sellers. Yeah, it’s the best-selling one in France. Yeah.
Speaker A
If you don't have the ripeness level at the time it was pressed, I don't take the olive. It must be on the bottle. So nobody should buy olive oil if it’s in a transparent bottle.
Speaker A
This tree was always there beside me, and so it gave me a guide, a path, a methodology, a rigor. In life's events, I tried to behave as uprightly as it does.
Speaker A
This one has been catching my eye since the beginning of the interview. Put it with honey, eucalyptus, toast, and rosemary. You'll go to work with a different kind of enthusiasm. More and more of you are watching our videos and
Speaker A
I thank you for it. But the majority of you are not subscribed to the channel.
Speaker A
So, I propose something to you. Take a few seconds to subscribe. It’s a small gesture for you, but it helps us enormously. And in return, I commit to listening to your feedback, inviting the best experts in the world, and
Speaker A
continuing to produce a quality show. I’m counting on you. Thank you very much. Today, I am hosting a man who has dedicated over 20 years to a single quest. He crosses the Mediterranean basin, works in presses, learns from
Speaker A
producers, refines his palate, and spends years studying nature's most precious produce. He is now one of the few experts capable of reading an olive oil and revealing all its nuances. This expertise leads him to assist the greatest Michelin-starred chefs. But
Speaker A
his work doesn't stop at the plate because behind every oil, there is a tree, behind every tree a soil, and behind every soil a responsibility. He defends a vision where gastronomic excellence cannot exist without respect for living things. Alexis Munos, hello.
Speaker A
Hello. And welcome to the Manel Show. Thank you very much. Thank you. I am very happy to host you today because you should know that I love olive oil. Not a day goes by without me eating olive oil. And yet, there are
Speaker A
many things I don't know because while preparing for this interview, I realized that indeed there are many things hidden from us or taught poorly, so I have prepared many questions. We will try to provide a true masterclass on olive oil and I am truly delighted
Speaker A
to have you with us today for this shared episode. And to start, I suggest we dive straight into the heart of the matter.
Speaker A
Alexis, I would like to know what is the biggest lie we've been told about olive oil for all these years. There are several, but first of all, thank you for having me. Uh, there are several, but two of the big lies are
Speaker A
already thinking that a country or a region determines the quality of an olive oil. That is a real lie.
Speaker A
It is obviously easier to talk about a country. We can talk about Italy; it makes many people dream. We can talk about Les Baux-de-Provence; it makes many people dream—holidays, television, Giono, the cicadas, and everything that goes with it. Uh, so
Speaker A
the country and the region do not make the quality of olive oil, and we communicate much more about that than about the olive oil itself. And the second lie—I would say it is a lie—is a way of obscuring, of intentionally
Speaker A
hiding what the big brands you have in stores today are doing. I am indeed talking about big brands, and when I speak of retail, I am obviously talking about supermarkets, but when I speak of supermarkets, I am also talking about
Speaker A
organic stores. They are not producers; they are marketers. So these are people who buy olive oils here and there and bottle them, historically among the big recognized brands.
Speaker A
And since they've been around for years, they are pioneers in their field, especially in organic stores, the French organic network, and nobody asks where the olive oils come from. You need a few little clues to understand where they come from.
Speaker A
All right. So in reality, they don't know much about olive oil. It's more commerce, more marketing.
Speaker A
Yes, they do, because over time, you start to know a little bit about it.
Speaker A
Well, at any rate, they know it in their own way. So, we'll still credit them with that knowledge. Um, they actually know so well that they know how to buy, blend, combine, or even use marketing as well. You have a famous
Speaker A
French brand or a famous Italian brand. The famous Italian brand in supermarkets has been owned by Spaniards for 30 years.
Speaker A
Ah! And the famous French brand that has the name of a small village or a small French town, it has never produced anything there.
Speaker A
So all that is just storytelling. Yes, ma'am. All right. Yeah. A bit like it is in all of the food industry today in general, and not just food. Marketing has taken over.
Speaker A
When I say marketing, I mean it in the broad sense of the term, it has taken precedence over education; we have become consumers of brands more than consumers of products. So I would say it's more of a problem for
Speaker A
consumers, for citizens, much more than for manufacturers who respond to what people buy. In terms of percentage, how much does that account for, these olive oils sold to us in stores? Uh, the famous oils that are very accessible in price—well, now,
Speaker A
because they have even become very expensive. But the vast majority of olive oils represent more than 90% worldwide.
Speaker A
Wow, that's huge. You go to Walmart in the United States, you have the same ones; you go to mass retail in general. So you have large units, big cooperatives that sell olive oil in bulk. There's a lot in Spain,
Speaker A
since Spain is the world's leading producer of olive oil, and in Tunisia too. And they sell bulk in very large quantities. It is very difficult nowadays to face a consumer who is spoon-fed by supermarket brands, the two or three well-known brands, or the
Speaker A
same thing in organic stores. You have mechanized your routine when you walk into a supermarket or an organic store.
Speaker A
You pick up this bottle because your grandmother, your mother, your grandmother bought it. So unconsciously, you repeat the same gesture, and getting the consumer out of that reflex today is very difficult. And we can clearly see that the consumer isn't
Speaker A
very willing for the moment. Uh, perhaps it will change over time—I'm a bit skeptical about that—to ask questions when at the shelf, or to ask them before arriving at the store to know what they are going to buy.
Speaker A
Understood. They just consume. Exactly. I would like to know what is the most difficult part of producing olive oil that people tend to underestimate. Well, we are pressing a fruit, so in itself, one might consider that it’s not very
Speaker A
complicated. Despite everything, there is expertise, and of course, there are quite a few factors that determine whether you will make a good olive oil or a bad one. 60% of olive oil quality is achieved before arriving at the mill.
Speaker A
Before arriving at the mill. Yeah. 60%, because if you have a bad fruit that has been poorly trans...
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very quickly, not visually like a grape , but physically and chemically much faster than a grape. So if you start with that raw material, you could have the best miller and the best machine, the best technology possible, you won't
Speaker A
make good olive oil. So that’s why I say that the raw material and the logistics that allow you to harvest the fruit whole and fresh, and get it to the mill in under 5 or 6 hours as we do
Speaker A
, that is the foundation. And then, what characterizes good production— people can't imagine it because they haven't visited a mill—is the technology. Today, the machine is not a millstone like before. Back then, you had mills grinding stone against stone,
Speaker A
powered by camels or horses. Uh, so we would grind, just like we did for flour , for wheat, actually. We would grind the olive, stone against stone. We would collect a coarse paste that we placed on "scourtins." Those large
Speaker A
raffia or straw discs that we actually use for decoration today, stacked one on top of the other. Like this, we would pack it, making sandwiches of paste and raffia discs, paste and raffia discs, and we would press it all
Speaker A
. Back then, the olive oil would seep out along the raffia straw, follow channels—hollowed-out stone gutters —and go into underground vats for settling and natural filtration.
Speaker A
Today, the machines have changed quite a bit. The machines today are high-tech , and even if French people are looking for authenticity—because I think we sorely lack authenticity and are always looking for those little hallmarks like "hand-pressed,""unfiltered," or "
Speaker A
old-fashioned mill"—All of that is actually negative and harmful to the quality of the olive oil. Technology today is at the service of product quality. They have built us mills that look like kitchen appliances. When you arrive at the mill, we wash the olives
Speaker A
and then grind them. Today, we grind them in a device called a crusher, which could look like a kitchen blender . You know, that device with its somewhat sharp blades. We try to grind the olive without oxidizing it, whereas
Speaker A
back then, when you crushed it, you were in contact with heat—stone against stone—with air (oxidation), and with light (oxidation). So, you hadn't even started the olive oil production process yet, and you already had a paste that was highly oxidized by
Speaker A
those three oxidizing factors. Today, when you arrive at a high-tech mill where we control the rotation speeds of the crushers and the temperature throughout the entire line, we are really doing "fine cooking." We grind and mix a paste, and then we perform a
Speaker A
horizontal separation, which is to say, juice extraction just like we do at home with a juicer. But all these devices are maintained, remote-controlled, and computer-driven.
Speaker A
We manage to—if we want to, and if we know our machine well, and if we know the olives coming in—we can extract the quintessence of the fruit, which is something we couldn't do back then with the old mills. So, technology has
Speaker A
ultimately been at the service of olive oil quality, which is sometimes the opposite of what some people say. It's true that one might say, perhaps not specifically for olive oil, but in a general sense, that when new technology
Speaker A
arrives, you lose a little bit of the very essence, the DNA, and the quality of the product. Here, it is totally the opposite.
Speaker A
It is the opposite. Yeah, completely. And I tell you, it's more of a psychological perspective for the consumer; I’ve seen bottles of olive oil labeled "unfiltered." Unfiltered is heresy for an olive oil. You cannot skip filtering olive oil—it must
Speaker A
either be statically decanted or filtered—because if you leave sediment inside, you had better consume it within the following month, because there is air in that sediment, and air is a factor for oxidation. So, if you turn a bottle over and there is
Speaker A
sediment, it really speaks to a consumer. So But then in that case, if we read " unfiltered" on an olive oil, is it a lie? No, it’s not a lie, but I advise people against buying it. Unfiltered, you can buy it at the mill if the mill
Speaker A
is nearby, provided you bought it at the mill in November or December right when it was produced and consume it within the following month. Keeping a solid inside the olive oil increases the oxidation factor. So consuming it because it was recently pressed,
Speaker A
especially for an early harvest—that is, a fruity and green oil with sediment—yes, no problem. It’s actually quite nice, but very quickly and without leaving the sediment in the bottle, because otherwise, I tell you, as soon as you stir it, you will
Speaker A
oxidize it prematurely. OK. Well, that's good to know at least. Are we actually capable of recognizing good olive oil? We could be, but for now only a small part of the population knows how to because they have let
Speaker A
themselves be carried away by these standard oils. What happened with milk is now happening with oil. With milk, have someone taste cow's milk today that comes straight from the dairy, straight from the barn.
Speaker A
Ah, that can be difficult. The table, sorry. Because we aren't used to it. It smells very strong.
Speaker A
Of course. You see that little side, a bit, a bit like manure. I grew up with it, so it doesn't shock me. But if you have a city dweller taste that today, or not even just a city dweller, but
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just someone from today. They find it too strong, not good, and it doesn't taste like milk to them. For milk, it's that famous brand we know, those milks microfiltered once, twice, three times, ten times to deal with lactose or
Speaker A
whatever else, but mostly because they wanted to make a standard, neutral product that wouldn't change every year and wouldn't be too strong, so it would appeal to as many people as possible, and would also be a bit more profitable
Speaker A
because, if you dilute it, at some point you'll have more volume, and therefore more product to sell. So the food industry, the agri-food industry has shaped us for 30 years toward standardization.
Speaker A
The standardization of palates. Of palates for products, so, of palates . Yeah. De facto, and from father to son, mother to daughter, well, in any case, from generation to generation, we have managed to create the palate of standardization. So for olive oil, it's
Speaker A
the same thing. You go to the supermarket, you take the three biggest brands that are widely visible in every supermarket, no matter the brand, you put them to a taste test and you'll see they are exactly the same. Why? Because
Speaker A
first of all, they come from the same place, from those famous, large Spanish and Tunisian cooperatives, which are the only countries that export, since all the other countries consume directly. These phenomena were largely inspired by the Italians. It was the
Speaker A
Italians in the trade back in the 50s and 60s, during the "30 Glorious Years, " who really discovered and developed all the technical aspects of refining, deodorizing, blending, and assembling, trying to create this product that would be appreciated by everyone. So
Speaker A
we'll talk about that in a moment. Olive oil can naturally be bitter and pungent. If you bite into an olive right off the tree, you'll certainly spit it out immediately. It is extremely astringent.
Speaker A
With very powerful bitterness. It's not a fruit that you can just eat like that . That's why we put it in brine, by the way, to be able to eat it. We remove the bitterness. Right, so the olive oil
Speaker A
production process allows us to extract the components of the olive that are precisely bitter and can bother the palate. But where the food industry took it even further is that they created a very standard liquid that had no bitterness and no pungency. So it's
Speaker A
a neutral product that had no taste, because you can't really say it smells like olives. You can't say there's a specific characteristic that smells like tomato leaf, like the one I'll have you taste in a bit, or almond, or
Speaker A
—there's an incredible aromatic palette in olive oil. Well, we've been accustomed for years, the consumer, even in countries that are major consumers like Spain—we have Spain, which is the world's largest consumer along with the Maghreb, per person per
Speaker A
year. They consume between 24 and 25 liters of olive oil per person per year .
Speaker A
And yet, they too are conditioned. In fact, they are used to it. We've gotten them used to those specific olive oils. So, a consumer today doesn't have the tools to understand how to choose a good olive oil. They've
Speaker A
been given a few criteria, which are Extra Virgin—which are mainly Extra Virgin. I don't see any others, for that matter. After that, they were sold on subjectivity; they were sold on countries, regions, packaging, pretty bottles; they were sold on price: it's
Speaker A
expensive, it's cheap, but they were never told about variety or ripeness. You need to know one thing, and that is that we have a global production deficit. I'll explain why later, but what's certain is that we consume more
Speaker A
than we produce. So, fraud, like with honey, is very prevalent. And we are forced to use all the oils, including the bad ones. And so, industrial producers have managed to not only use virgin oils that have defects—because we don't only make
Speaker A
extra virgin when we produce olive oil; it happens that I mess up some oils, and I put them in the common vat, let's put it that way—but there are people who buy them up, okay?
Speaker A
We take the pits and process them again to extract 6 or 7%of the pits that we extract.
Speaker A
OK. We process it again in re-extraction plants—there are many in Tunisia, there are also a few in Spain and Italy —but we get another 6 or 7%of fat, which is pomace oil. If we refine it and deodorize it by heating it to 80-90
Speaker A
° C in refining plants, we turn it into a neutral fat that has no taste and no aroma. That's a bit bad, though, not too great. We've managed to neutralize it. If we mix it with a really good one, well, a good one, we
Speaker A
manage to pass the Extra Virgin criteria. They have no other choice but to buy it in Spain and Tunisia. So afterwards, they mix it. So if someone tells you, "I have an extra virgin olive oil that costs € 4 a liter." I
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have one made from pits that costs € 2.50 a liter. Obviously, it's from pits , so it's not good. It's really not good olive oil. I have pomace oil from the pulp left over from the skin. We still managed to extract oil from the
Speaker A
pulp using hexane. The famous hexane. It's a solvent. Do you know how we extract the fat from sunflower seeds? We use a solvent, hexane, right?
Speaker A
To extract the fat, and then we separate the hexane from the fat. We do the same for olive pomace oils. We recover the pulp and the pits. We inject hexane to get as much fat out as possible. It's a solvent that separates
Speaker A
the solid from the fat. And then we separate it, but traces of hexane remain. It's highly carcinogenic.
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It's one of the products that—like titanium dioxide or cadmium—is part of the products creating chemical cocktails in our bodies.
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Molotov cocktails inside, you know. So, getting back to production, what is the most important thing? Is it the soil or the tree?
Speaker A
It's the tree. It's the variety. That's a good question, Samel. I'll draw two parallels. In wine, we often talk about terroir. And so "terroir," which is a magnificent word, has been used in wine , but not only in wine; in many fields.
Speaker A
And internationally, when you're French and you travel, if you use the word " terroir" in English, it sounds very classy.
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But what do we mean by terroir? And so, when you start discussing with some— I'm lucky enough to know great oenologists—and when we discuss terroir with great oenologists, they include altitude, they include oxygenation because, depending on whether you are in Mendoza, San Juan,
Speaker A
in Argentina, or if you are in the Rhône Valley, not far from sea level, you already have a very different phenomenon. The issue of oxygenation on the fruit has a significant impact on its ability to develop its structure.
Speaker A
Then there is sunlight, photosynthesis. Do we include that in terroir? So, they call terroir the set of parameters surrounding the earth.
Speaker A
That's a lot, then. That is a lot. Whereas with "terroir," you don't need a degree in Greek or Latin to understand that we are clearly talking about the land. So "terroir" is a sort of catch-all where we've managed
Speaker A
to sell something, a form of characteristic—I won't use the word " typicity" yet, I'll use it right after —of a region's characteristics. Yeah.
Speaker A
So, for terroir, I still have a lot of reservations. Regarding olive trees, what is certain is let’s place ourselves on both sides of the Pyrenees . Spanish Catalonia and French Catalonia, for example, Carcassonne, which isn't Catalonia but isn't far off
Speaker A
. As the crow flies, we are 86 km from the border. Yes. Careful not to upset the locals, don't want to anger them, you never know, but we get along well. You go 86 km behind into Spain, to Borja Blanca,
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a valley that runs between Barcelona and Lérida. You plant the same tree, the Arbequina, which comes from a village called Arbeca that is right next door. You plant this same variety of olive tree at the same time in an
Speaker A
identical altitude setting. It's doable , it's possible, with photosynthesis that will be slightly higher in Spain than in Carcassonne, not much, but still a bit higher. You make it, you harvest it with the same maturity index . That's scientific, it's technical, so
Speaker A
we can control it. You press it, you press the olive in the same machine with the same producer. When tasting, you won't be able to tell the difference between the two olive oils.
Speaker A
The variety—and this is where the word "typicity" comes in. "Typos" means the type. The type is the variety. We have often used this word "typicity" for a region. I have often heard about the typicity of the Baux-de-Provence.
Speaker A
No, we don't talk about typicity for a region. We talk about typicity for a variety. Picholine, Glandeau, whatever you want, Souriani or Nabali. But the variety comes first, and then the fruit's maturity will determine whether you like it or not, or if you'll enjoy
Speaker A
it with a certain dish or season, and so on. So what really matters is not the region, it is truly the tree. The tree and the typicity of its fruit. And then, once you have the typicity of this fruit, it's up to you to decide
Speaker A
whether to press it early, at the perfect point of ripeness, or as a late harvest to make three different olive oils.
Speaker A
Okay, that's interesting, but that means the same tree growing in Greece, Palestine, or Spain will produce exactly the same olive oil.
Speaker A
Well, it doesn't grow in all these countries at the same time. You have 1,200 varieties of olive trees on the planet. They are mainly around the Mediterranean basin. There are a few varieties like the RAU or in Argentina,
Speaker A
but the vast majority of these 1,200 are around the Mediterranean basin. It dates back to the Phoenicians, the Romans who structured it, spread it and structured it, but it was still the Phoenicians who planted it at the very
Speaker A
beginning. Uh, Mother Nature placed them all around the Mediterranean basin , and borders, which are an administrative and political human matter, have changed absolutely nothing . So you have some varieties in common. It is rare to have common
Speaker A
varieties between two countries, but for example between Algeria and Tunisia , you find the same Chemali which is one of the two well-known varieties from Tunisia. There is the Chetoui and the Chemali. But the Chemali, indeed, can also be found in
Speaker A
Algeria. But even so, it is rare. So you look at the 1,200 olive varieties, if you consider that we can make at least two olive oils, a green fruity and a ripe fruity, perhaps even three if we do a late harvest, I'll stick to
Speaker A
two. Green fruity, ripe fruity, well, you have the possibility of having a combination of 2,400 different olive oils.
Speaker A
Oh yes, and the varieties really make a big difference. Uh, we were talking about Lebanon earlier. In Lebanon, you take a Souri variety and a Samakmaki variety, one from the Beqaa and the other further up toward Tripoli. Uh, we
Speaker A
find it a little bit further back in Homs too in Syria, but these are two olive varieties at an equivalent maturity that are completely different.
Speaker A
The aromas are not the same at all, the tastes are not the same. And besides, there is one that won't lend itself very well to a ripe fruity because it gives off aromas that are not very pleasant. So, you have to make
Speaker A
it as a green fruity. So the expertise, it's there, it's in this understanding that one can have of the fruit and especially of its tasting. And the opportunity I was given, in any case my encounters, my travels—we might talk about that
Speaker A
later—is to have gained a bit of perspective on all that, to have also, there is still an anthropological side to it. I got very, uh, I got very much into the history. I am very, uh, I am very, um, I am very curious about
Speaker A
consumption habits, cuisines, and traditions, and I try to do my job without preaching. I try to do my job when I am asked to speak about technique and objectivity, I do it. And when people start explaining to me,
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asking me why we consume this type of olive oil in such a country or such a cuisine, that really interests me more, the side, much more than the technical side. Well , you’ve set me up, Alexis, since we’ve prepared something. We actually
Speaker A
went shopping and selected three olive oils that are most commonly found in stores. The idea is to do a blind tasting, as I have already prepared them, and have you tell us what you think of each one. Are you ready? Yes.
Speaker A
You noticed before we get started that the creaminess of your three olive oils , the color is not a quality criterion.
Speaker A
That’s why we taste oils in blue-tinted or red glasses, which keep us from being conditioned by the color.
Speaker A
But let's take the easy way out. Do you find a difference between these three olive oils?
Speaker A
Oh well no, I don’t see any. Ah yes, you have the same creaminess for these three olive oils. You have the same color and even before we put our noses in them, indeed, I think we are dealing with olive oils
Speaker A
that are more or less in the same category. OK, indeed, we see a big difference with this one, right?
Speaker A
Maybe I could be wrong, but the first element, how do we taste an olive oil?
Speaker A
The first thing we look at is the intensity of the fruitiness. I'll let you taste the first one, the one on the end. There you go. And tell me what you think of it. Already fruity . Uh, you see, I have a habit of moving
Speaker A
my nose, my glass, sorry, I don't move my nose, I move my glass away from my nose. Uh, an olive oil, a good olive oil. You should be able to smell the aromas above the glass. Well, right here, aromatically, it is very, very
Speaker A
weak, or even, or even, or even nonexistent. In terms of fruitiness, an olive oil, a good olive oil, we rate it at 4 out of 9 for fruitiness, that's already very, very good. I’ve rarely seen olive oils at 6, here we are at 2 or 3.
Speaker A
Uh, so it seems bland to you? No, it is very bland in terms of aroma.
Speaker A
So, already no aromatic complexity. OK. Well What’s happening on your palate right now? You are tough? You are very tough.
Speaker A
It's tough, isn't it? You are very harsh. But what’s happening is that you have a fatty substance. Okay?
Speaker A
Which is very fatty; a good monovarietal olive oil, when you ingest it, you get the sense, the soapy sensation of the fatty substance, since olive juice is a fatty substance. We can, we can talk about it later, which
Speaker A
is created during a phenomenon called lipogenesis, which takes place in September, when the fruit is fully grown. It's growing right now, it will get a heat wave now in August, and at the end of August, September, this process of lipogenesis will kick in.
Speaker A
They turn into a fatty substance. So olive juice is a fatty substance. This is too fatty.
Speaker A
The fatty substance you ingest from a good extra virgin olive oil, you have it in your mouth for a few seconds because it is a fat. But your mouth needs to feel dry afterward. Otherwise, I'm going to be eating grease until
Speaker A
tonight. Ah, it’s very greasy, it has no nose. It’s a vulgar blend of the Picual variety from Spain, which is the most, it’s the most widespread tree. So, we use Picual to hide certain flaws, and it can come from Spain, Italy, or
Speaker A
wherever, or France, but the base is made with Picual. The rest is a blend of, of, of, not very, not strong, not very, not well thought out, not very well made. It’s very fatty, it’s quite indigestible, and well, there you
Speaker A
go, I, I wouldn’t pay much for, for this olive oil. Before I show you this bottle, do you think you could recognize it? Well, if you already take all the varieties that you have, uh, if you take the varieties
Speaker A
that you have, uh, in the supermarket, many will be like this. It was this one, Puget.
Speaker A
I think it's one of the best-sellers, right, in stores. It’s the best-seller in France. Yeah.
Speaker A
Yeah. Very good. Yes, they are, and you see, I’ve been looking at your bottle since we did the Nutri-Score, all olive oils are going to be rated B. So, they’ve introduced another criterion again where we still aren't talking about olive oil. Now,
Speaker A
one might say that’s not the point, but still, when you sell a historic brand with a B on the Nutri-Score, presumably it speaks for itself, it’s good, right? Let's go. And we’ll talk , uh, about the bottle itself a little
Speaker A
later in the interview because that, too, is of capital importance. Moving on to the second one. Well, first off, there’s a pungency, so there’s a slightly higher proportion of good olives. It’s always a blend, it’s always a mix that is still just
Speaker A
as oily and just as low in intensity. There’s zero, same thing, I have no nose for it, I get nothing at all. Even the next one in front, I don't smell a thing.
Speaker A
Does it seem better to you than the first one? Slightly. Slightly, slightly. Simply, there’s a slightly higher proportion of green olives in this one. Certainly, since I have more sensory fat in there than in the first one. So, if I were an olive oil chemist
Speaker A
, I’d take a poor olive oil used here , a green variety, I have a doubt here, I’m not even sure there’s any Picual in it. It looks like a fatty liquid Coroneiki and there’s a pungency. To me, it’s a supermarket
Speaker A
oil that was bought, same as the first, and bottled by a brand you find in supermarkets. It’s, it’s, it’s even worse than the first one.
Speaker A
Oh, I see, okay. Yeah, we’re on this one, Latourangelle. That doesn’t surprise me. Which is supposed to be better, which one is it? Latourangelle. Hm.
Speaker A
Hm. Why "supposed to be"? In the marketing? No, in the marketing, in the history of how they sell olive oil.
Speaker A
I saw they even made an agroecology one . It’s a company based in Touraine, a very, very serious firm that produced seeds like all these people often do.
Speaker A
So, sunflower, rapeseed, it’s a historic family, okay, based in Touraine, Latourangelle, and they made their business with olive oil just like others, big brands in organic stores and such, have done. I could name you plenty of brands that
Speaker A
started by pressing seeds, a bit of sunflower, a bit of rapeseed, and actually discovered olive oil; for 30 years, this family has been very established, two generations, hm, and they date back to 1867, they have avocado oils, they have
Speaker A
sesame oils, and in Touraine, for Latourangelle, there are no olive trees , no avocado trees, no...
Speaker A
Got it. So they buy it. This one here, Alexis, it’s sold for more than the first one. Is it justified in your opinion?
Speaker A
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Oh yes no. Alright. If you had, see, plus I see it's organic. If you had given me these two olive oils. The only thing I can tell you is that it has a bit more pungency,
Speaker A
but it has no real depth. To me, we are in the same universe. The price isn't even justified, perhaps for the first one, but even less so the price difference between the two.
Speaker A
So, does organic have any benefit for olive oil? Organic doesn't mean good. Now, you're talking to an environmentalist, so I'm going to advise you to buy organic. But I am sad to see, I am truly sad, that's not just a figure of speech. I am sad
Speaker A
to see that people are always the same; it's a notion of consumption, I don't sense intelligence, I don't sense curiosity, I don't sense a desire to know. When you walk into an organic store, you delegate your health to the
Speaker A
brand name above the door the moment you walk in, whether it's blue, red, or yellow, we don't care. There is no curiosity. Yet, it is a store that certainly selects organic, and so it's better to buy organic than non-organic.
Speaker A
Unfortunately, organic is very expensive. So people who don't have money don't have the option to go there .
Speaker A
But organic does not mean good. It doesn't say "good" on the store. Absolutely. Absolum.
Speaker A
There you have the example. You have a good example. You served me an organic one. The second one is no better than the first, which isn't organic. And actually, organic is a first criterion, but the truth is we
Speaker A
still need to understand, we'll talk about that later. What are the criteria ? What should you look for on a bottle?
Speaker A
Who produced it? What variety, what maturity, what protection for the liquid? It's good to remember, organic doesn't necessarily mean "Right, let's move on to the third olive oil." I know it's a bit of torture for you, right?
Speaker A
Oh yeah? So, look, see how my lips are shining. That's the fat. Ah, it's a fat that is unbearable.
Speaker A
It's cloying. It's very cloying, it's floury, it's greasy, it stays, you can't clean your mouth. And here, we have a vulgar, we have a vulgar blend.
Speaker A
Well there you go, Carapelli, it's the third one with a very Italian name. Yes. Carapelli is a company that was created in Italy in Florence, in Firenze, it's written there.
Speaker A
Historically, it is a trading company. It is an olive oil house. So they used to buy olive oils in the interwar years and their margins were very low because they depended on Spain, which was the world's leading producer and still is
Speaker A
the world's leading producer. Spain produces 55 to 60%of the world's output . Since the Spanish were poor during the dictatorship and the Italians were doing a little bit better, they were very strong in trade. Whether it was leather, shoes, big brands, leather
Speaker A
bags made in Elche, Spain, still today, uh tomatoes, olives, almonds, they bought bulk in Spain and traded it. So Carapelli is a historic trading company and it was bought by its main supplier 30 years ago, Spain.
Speaker A
So Carapelli actually comes from Spain. Yes. And if you look at the back, it should say Deoleo.
Speaker A
Well, precisely, I would like you to help me. Yes. Teach me how to decipher a label a little bit.
Speaker A
There isn't much to look at in there. See Deoleo. Deoleo is the first, it's a group listed on the Ibex 35, it's Spanish. OK.
Speaker A
Well, now they are obliged to mark it. If you look at this bottle, they explain all sorts of things, like for over 130 years Carapelli has been working in respect of tradition, blah blah, rich in nuances and endowed with
Speaker A
balanced flavors. Well, very good. The fact is that it is an extra virgin. Very good. We will come back to that later, keep away from light and heat.
Speaker A
It's not there. And if you look on the side very discreetly, that is the most interesting part. Very small, it's always written in small print, either on the back or small. See, it says origin European Union and non-European
Speaker A
Union. Yet, we agree, we are only talking about one olive oil. There, it is an olive oil.
Speaker A
So, we still manage to make a "super product" that costs a lot, which is really the worst of the three. Really, it's not good at all what I tasted that comes from Tunisia and Spain.
Speaker A
Ah, hence the "EU/non-EU", it's the only two countries. Every country today , whether you take Greece, Portugal, Morocco, Lebanon, all these, Turkey which lacks olive oil today, they are olive oil consumers. their production, even if you see small bottles in
Speaker A
specialty shops here and there, but the vast majority of their production stays in the country and is consumed by the local consumers. So, I would say the only ones capable, through their historical production volume, of exporting on a large scale is Spain,
Speaker A
which, even though it consumes a lot— 24 liters per person per year, a record —exports two-thirds of its production . So, their average production is 1.4 million tons out of the 3 million tons we produce globally. So you see,
Speaker A
a bit more, almost half. Well, it's 2.6 million tons, the global production. But two-thirds go to the international market. It is them, Spain, that provides the vast majority of all these oils. The good ones, the not-so-good ones, and so on; it's like wine in
Speaker A
France. You have lots of wine; I come from a region in the south of France, there are many regions that produce wine in large quantities that doesn't necessarily end up in the region's own bottles, and so on.
Speaker A
Now, I have a question, Alexis, because earlier you rightly told me that " organic" doesn't mean "good." There, in countries like Tunisia and Morocco, they produce some very good olive oils.
Speaker A
So, is it a good thing or not, ultimately, that this oil also comes from outside European countries?
Speaker A
But that's not the problem, the country . That's what I was telling you. It depends on which mill, which producer, and which olive it is. Why do they buy it there? Because they buy it cheap.
Speaker A
Because they are the only ones exporting. So when you only have two countries exporting and you're called Carapelli or Puget or whoever, you don't have 150 solutions. You are forced to go to the two countries that will sell it to you. There aren't three.
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. Turkey, for example, today, which is consuming—it's a country with significant demographic growth— is consuming more and more olive oil.
Speaker A
Its production from Cappadocia and Anatolia, where there can also be good mills and good producers, is not enough to satisfy national consumption. So they import from Tunisia. If they import from Tunisia, they take it away from those brands that had a monopoly.
Speaker A
Yeah. So that means they have less, and they have to sell at a higher price. Hence the price increases in recent years.
Speaker A
That same carafe you showed me, I saw it at Carrefour for € 15 a liter, € 12.95 for 75 cl. Back in the day, it was worth € 6 or € 7, just 10 years ago. So it's expensive, and it's not
Speaker A
good. Let's be honest about it; actually, it's the formula they found for profitability. So, tell me Alexis, what should I absolutely pay attention to when I read an olive oil label?
Speaker A
I wouldn't want to be a consumer. Is it complicated? It is complicated. Yeah, it's very complicated because you see, all these bottles are saturated with awards, medals, organic labels. Obviously, because the more they put on it, the less you'll read. So they give you
Speaker A
something pretty, they give you a nice logo. Uh, the Puget colors are historic colors. They brought back the color from grandma's grocery store, from the cupboard. You'd open your grandmother's cupboard. Back then, you had that same 1L Puget bottle. That yellow, a bit
Speaker A
from the 60s, it's intentional, it's marketing. So, what I recommend, in any case, the objective criteria for choosing, is one: the olive variety, like a grape variety in wine. OK. Take wine. It's not just the Burgundy you like. Even if it makes for some fine
Speaker A
ones, it's first and foremost the Pinot Noir, the grape variety. If you don't like Syrah, you won't like the Côtes du Rhône. I don't know. It's primarily the grape variety that will give the wine its taste. After that, we can
Speaker A
discuss the aging, how it's produced, and so on. It's the same for olive oil.
Speaker A
First, the variety. A Picual, you either like it or you don't. If you don't like tomato leaf aromas, and if you don't like bitter or spicy notes, you won't like the Picual variety. Well, that's already the first criterion; it must be on the can or
Speaker A
bottle. The olive variety must be marked. If you choose a monovarietal, you are sure there is no blending. Very important.
Speaker A
The second criterion is the ripeness of the fruit. You have your—your olive presentation is very nice. There you have three colors of olives. Here, you have an olive that isn't ripe, which was harvested—so in an early harvest.
Speaker A
So normally, if you take it from the tree, it's hard as a rock. Yeah.
Speaker A
It's not ripe. It has very little fat inside. While from a ripe olive we get 20%olive oil, here we only get 10%.
Speaker A
Oh, half as much. Yeah, half. It’s a very low yield. So , extracting olive oil from an unripe olive, like a green one, you get very fresh, herbaceous aromas and flavors with significant bitterness and pungency, but also a very high
Speaker A
antioxidant load. In fact, these antioxidants are expressed through the bitterness. That’s how it manifests.
Speaker A
Now, there must be a balance between the bitterness and the pungency. But if you don’t like bitterness and pungency, if they really bother you—I know people, even chefs, who just can't handle the green fruitiness. So for them, this criterion of early harvest,
Speaker A
or at least the difference between green and ripe fruit, is important. If I don’t like green, I won’t buy green, I’ll buy ripe.
Speaker A
Then there's the variety, and it's the same for ripe; if you go up in fruit maturity, you reach veraison. Veraison is the intermediate stage between the green olive and the very ripe olive. So , veraison will give you olives. I’d
Speaker A
say it’s the perfect point of maturity. Hmm. That’s the right time to press any fruit, whether it’s an orange, an olive, or a plum. Overall, that’s where you get the widest, most complex, and most interesting range of aromas.
Speaker A
Oh, I see. When the fruit is ripe, when it’s very ripe, you start to get a bit like the green one again. You start to narrow the aromatic range. With green, you often lean toward freshly cut grass or leaves. So it’s still restricted,
Speaker A
very chlorophyll-heavy. With ripe, you go toward something very mellow, like black olive jam. Hmm.
Speaker A
So the complexity there isn't very high . That doesn't mean it’s not good, though. I love green fruitiness, for example. But that’s how you can make three completely different olive oils from the same variety. So the variety and the maturity should be on the
Speaker A
bottle. If you don't have the variety name and the state of maturity at the time of pressing, I’m not buying that oil.
Speaker A
That’s very interesting. And so a green olive is just an olive that hasn't ripened yet.
Speaker A
Yes, ma'am. But you know, there are a lot of people , I think, who aren't yet the majority.
Speaker A
Yeah. no one, or very few people know, I discovered it not long ago. To me, it was obvious, and it was also, it's hard for me to accept that, actually, saying that people have disconnected from nature. When you ask people today in
Speaker A
this modern era, this age of consumption, seasonality, we don't know it anymore. No one knows when to harvest olives or apples or plums or tomatoes that are there all year round.
Speaker A
We don't know the names of trees anymore. Their names, the oak, the deciduous, the evergreens, I won't even mention the animals. So, I discovered indeed that people weren't educated on that. Now, it's also the profession's fault for perhaps not doing the work,
Speaker A
but a black or purple olive is a green olive that ripened. There you go, you have three states of maturity.
Speaker A
That's also the goal of this interview, Alexis, right? It's to be able to teach , precisely. Yeah, I really love that. That's why I said yes right away, because I know we need to communicate, to explain, so people
Speaker A
don't get fooled anymore like they have been. I know that media like yours have the means today to reach curious people .
Speaker A
That's it. And that's what interests me too, reaching those curious people. That's what we'll try to do, in any case, I hope so.
Speaker A
The third objective selection criterion is who produced it. If you don't have the place of production, and it's not EU or non-EU, that's just not acceptable. "Non-EU," what does that even mean? And besides, it's been legal for 10 years because
Speaker A
they passed this kind of law, supposedly to provide traceability. I don't see where the traceability is in "EU/non-EU." It explains nothing to the consumer. So, there must be the region.
Speaker A
Yes, because it makes no sense, honestly. And who? The lady or the gentleman who produced it.
Speaker A
On my cans. You have the name. I put my name on them. It's not narcissism. It's because if someone needs to be held accountable, it's me. That's what interests me, to say it's me. It's good , it's me.
Speaker A
You take responsibility. It's not good. It's me too. So, the variety, the maturity, the name.
Speaker A
And so, please, Even if it isn't pretty, protect olive oil from light. Olive oil is a photosensitive product, very photosensitive, that oxidizes with heat , air, and especially light.
Speaker A
So, it's not a myth that you hear about on the bottle. We have a legal obligation, we producers or other players, distributors, to mark: store away from light and heat. How can you be a producer or a distributor? To be forced
Speaker A
to mark that and then leave a bottle on a store shelf, even green or brown, under shelf lights—maybe for less, maybe for two, maybe six months, we don't know.
Speaker A
So, never buy olive oil found in this type of clear, practically transparent bottle. Transparent.
Speaker A
They are green, it's called antique glass. Glassmakers manufacture them with a coloring that has absolutely no UV treatment. A UV treatment. Here, you have one that I make in very small quantities. I make it in small quantities for a few chefs, but you see
Speaker A
the mirror effect; you can't see the liquid. There, there is a UV, anti-UV treatment applied over it, which isn't perfect.
Speaker A
That's why I only make very few bottles , because even with the UV treatment, I know it's not perfect and I know those bottles must be sold in less than 6 months. So, I make sure that between production and the moment
Speaker A
it's sold, it lasts 2 years. There's no problem. But I make sure it's sold right away.
Speaker A
Agreed. OK. And so, ultraviolet, which is actually one of the three criteria we measure: ultraviolet resistance. The K-values, that's what we call them. The letter K in chemistry is extremely important. So , putting bottles on shelves with glass
Speaker A
, it's a crime. That's why I have to sacrifice marketing. I have to sacrifice the beauty of the bottle.
Speaker A
Many people don't buy from us because it's a tin, so they don't like it, but they don't actually understand. They don't know that we do it for them. I want that when a gentleman or a lady opens the tin, I want them to feel what
Speaker A
I feel when I'm down at the tank. I have 20-ton vacuum-sealed tanks, there is no air inside. I regularly taste the oils to see how they evolve throughout the year. I bottle them as I go along.
Speaker A
The same thing needs to happen when you open the tin. It goes from an inerted tank to a tin on a bottling line located below the tank. A mobile bottling line. So, it’s bottled without seeing any air or light. Yeah.
Speaker A
We bring it straight to the market. Today, those oils I was asked to taste go into large tanker trucks. So, a pump that’s already failing makes for bad olive oil. We put it into a truck with a piston pump. So we introduce air, and
Speaker A
hop, we load it from the tank into the truck. The truck travels a long way and goes to another location. Who knows where in France it gets bottled, where they use another pump to put it into yet another tank. So, if it wasn't good
Speaker A
to begin with, imagine what's left before it's even bottled. Yeah. Exactly. But it's "Extra Virgin." So, oil sold to us in a transparent bottle is a heresy.
Speaker A
It’s a heresy. Even with major premium brands. There was even a blogger not long ago who launched her own olive oil, which is very trendy, beautiful with its little label. But you know, I was thinking of her too
Speaker A
when I asked you the question; indeed, L-Kitchen, who is very well-known, takes her bottle, so that doesn't sell immediately. The olive oil she bought and selected from a top-tier mill is of very, very high quality.
Speaker A
It is one of the, I’d say one of the best producers among those I’ve tasted recently in Provence, so we have to give her credit for having a refined palate.
Speaker A
But how could he have accepted that then? To put his excellent olive oil in a transparent bottle because he sells it, and then it’s no longer his problem—the problem becomes the person who buys and uses it. So, if
Speaker A
it's sold immediately, there’s no problem. If it sits around in a kitchen , as long as it went from the tank to the clear bottle and has a cardboard sleeve, there’s no issue.
Speaker A
You can make very beautiful bottles by ensuring they aren't transparent. I have to admit, we didn't manage to get it because it's out of stock. So, all things considered, it was a real hit for her. I must say, she sells it at a
Speaker A
high price, it's 32 euros. Have you had the chance to taste it? What did you think of it?
Speaker A
I know the producer and he makes very good olive oils. So, I cannot criticize the olive oil.
Speaker A
The selection she made, in any case the people she works with are very good and serious. No criticism there. The problem is the packaging and the way it is sold. Furthermore, you should know that there aren't large quantities
Speaker A
produced at this mill. Yeah. So when you say it's out of stock, what quantity? In France, we produce less than 3%of the olive oil we consume. We produce between 3,500 and 5,000 tons and we consume between 130 and 140,000
Speaker A
tons. So each mill does not produce very much. Mills that produce a lot, like in Spain, Tunisia, or Greece, don't exist here. Uh, so we're already talking about small-scale production. " Small-scale" doesn't necessarily mean quality. Quality is found in a place,
Speaker A
region, country, or area where you have competition. When you have competition, you are forced in every sector in every field to be at your best, otherwise you won't sell compared to your neighbor. So the average price of olive oil in France is
Speaker A
40 to 50 euros per liter at the mill. You go to a mill, you're going to pay 20, 20 to 25 euros for half a liter.
Speaker A
That is the fair price. That is the price it's sold for in France. Do you think that's a good price? It's a very expensive price.
Speaker A
Ah, it's still expensive. Yeah, it's a high price. If you take, let's take a neutral country, like Portugal, which isn't known as a huge global producer.
Speaker A
Ah, they have very good olive oils. But they have great mills with great olive oils. I have eaten some excellent ones in Portugal.
Speaker A
You go to a normal mill, I'm not talking about the top tier. Yeah. I'm talking about a standard cooperative, which is a normal, common cooperative as you see in every country . You take their average Extra Virgin olive oil produced that year; they make
Speaker A
good, average, and lesser ones, just like all mills. That's how it is. You take an average one, put it in a blind taste test next to a French one, and I'm pretty sure which one you'll decide to keep.
Speaker A
Which one? The Portuguese one. An average olive oil. Actually, when you're in France, you don't need to sell quality. You sell France, you sell chauvinism, you sell a sort of value, the brand; how many people have made money off the "
Speaker A
France" brand? Luxury companies like LVMH, That's true, that's true, it's France that they sold. Dior perfume and the others, it's France that they sold. Certainly with creative work—we won't take that away from them—but it's still French culture that they sold.
Speaker A
Yes. And that creative work appeared a long time ago. Exactly. But I'm telling you, as long as we don't have an industry today that's a bit broader, a bit more competitive, you don't have any need to lower prices
Speaker A
or increase quality. Yeah. An average olive oil from Portugal, the one I mentioned earlier, you can go and buy it in stores over there. 10 or 11 euros per liter.
Speaker A
Yeah. There you go. Hm. And that's objective; you can verify it for yourself. On vacation, you go—I mentioned Portugal, but I could talk about Tunisia, Meknes in Morocco, or Andalusia. You go to a small mill, and the best olive oils in international
Speaker A
award competitions are Andalusian. The Andalusians from Jaén and Baeza, that's sort of the Mecca of olive oil.
Speaker A
In all international competitions, especially the biggest and most representative one in New York, it's the Spaniards who sweep everything.
Speaker A
Where is the "Mecca" of olive oil? It's a "golden triangle," as we call it . It's the triangle between Jaén—the city of Jaén, the Bordeaux of olive oil—Baeza, and Úbeda.
Speaker A
Ah, OK. It's southeastern Spain, uh, eastern Andalusia. That's where you find the most beautiful fruity green olive oils. They're vibrant and bold.
Speaker A
You have perfect olive oils. La Súbética, Castillo de Canena—these are like great estates, great houses with powerful expertise, with modern mills, with agricultural engineers, with producers, with HACCP standards. They are real, very high-quality factories for olive oil. Alright, back to
Speaker A
Lukitchen, because I really like her work, she does a good job. I’d say the only mistake she finally made with her olive oil is the clear bottle.
Speaker A
I wouldn't say she made a mistake. I think she’s catering to her consumers . I think she’s—I think she’s playing on...you can’t really blame Lukitchen for anything. She’s a great entrepreneur. She’s free to do what she wants.
Speaker A
Super entrepreneur, she sensed the opportunity and wanted to do something elegant. She actually prioritized the beauty of the bottle. She sells aesthetics, we can’t blame her for that. She sells Provence, we can’t blame her for that. Now, as the technician that I
Speaker A
am, I say no, not clear glass, because you’re not helping your customers, unless they consume it in 15 days, 3 weeks, or a month.
Speaker A
Well, maybe it’s an area for improvement for her, because who knows, maybe she’ll release a new batch next year, and perhaps by listening to this interview, she’ll make different choices. I think people have suggested it to her.
Speaker A
Yeah, I think so too. Though, it is true that we should remember one important thing, Alexis, which is that we’ve been talking a lot about business. People do business.
Speaker A
In reality, everyone does business. You too, with your comment, you’re finally doing business because you want to sell your own olive oil. So that’s not what we’re criticizing people for , is it?
Speaker A
Not at all, not at all. No, it’s not that at all. No, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s more about what you do with your money. We produce olive oil as best as we can. And all of our
Speaker A
earnings—we aren’t a big company, we’re a small one. I probably make ten times less in revenue than Calios, for example, but I only do olive oil; I don’t even sell olives. However, everything we earn is reinvested into a
Speaker A
French program. We are replanting olive trees in France because we need to create a more robust professional sector than what currently exists. You clearly understand that we can't stay at just 3%of what we consume. There is plenty of room to plant olive trees. So
Speaker A
, I’ve already planted quite a few trees with investors and my own funds. In five years, we’ve planted 480,000 olive trees.
Speaker A
Oh, bravo. So it depends on what you do with the money. Business is not a taboo. I have no issue with business. The issue is the quality criteria you apply to your selection. Do you select great olive oils or not if you don't produce them?
Speaker A
That is the point. So, the kitchen, bravo, it selected a great olive oil. Bravo. Next, do I put it in the right bottle? And then, I try to sell it. And then, well, what do I do with my money?
Speaker A
I mean, I want to, I still believe I am a bit more, I am driven a bit beyond my own little backyard, my small business.
Speaker A
My small business interests me, but it's not an end in itself. So, Alexis, how can I differentiate an average olive oil from a very good one?
Speaker A
First, taste it; you won't have any other solution. Once we have gone through the criteria I told you about.
Speaker A
Then, you smell it before putting it on a salad, or by the way, I invite you to put it on much more than just salad. In France, we wait for tomatoes, mozzarella, and salad to buy olive oil.
Speaker A
But in countries that consume olive oil , they consume it all year round. Uh, in the morning, instead of bread, butter, jam, or chocolate spread, I invite you to try toasted bread with the green fruity olive oil I’m going
Speaker A
to let you smell, with some tomato in summer. And when there are no tomatoes, stop with the tomatoes in winter. Put it with some eucalyptus honey or some rosemary. You know, have a little rosemary at home, even in the city on
Speaker A
the terrace, let the rosemary branches dry, rub them into a powder, and put some bread, olive oil, and rosemary.
Speaker A
Uh. You go to work, not with the same energy, bread, butter, and jam. I know it's French culture, but you’re already worn out for the day. You’ve taken in calories that you won't be able to take at noon.
Speaker A
No, but bread and olive oil first thing in the morning, that’s my favorite breakfast, you know. That's dangerous.
Speaker A
There you go. So here, for example, for the nose, I invite you to smell it.
Speaker A
There must be a distinct character. The Picual variety that I press in Andalusia, in Cordoba, when you press it green like this one—though I don't press it as green as I'd like, because I wouldn't sell it, it would be way too
Speaker A
peppery. Ah. So, I unfortunately had to adapt a bit to the consumer, but that's how it is.
Speaker A
And you have a distinct tomato leaf profile, like a tomato vine. When you pick tomatoes at home, it leaves you with this scent, you know, when when you smell your fingers, you still smell that tomato leaf which is a bit like fig leaf, too.
Speaker A
Something a bit similar. Picual, whether it's Alexie Mun, or Castillo de Canena which does it very well, or STK, it smells like tomato leaf.
Speaker A
That's it. Ah, the scent is truly exquisite. Wow! And likewise on the palate, as I told you, you'll have that oily side at the start, but at the end, you'll have a dry, astringent finish. It cannot leave you with an unpleasant greasy feeling.
Speaker A
So this, for example, you see, this green fruit oil is interesting for balancing out sweetness or fat. In other words, you take something beyond just burrata, you take a little goat cheese that isn't too aged, a cheese that's a bit milky, you know, a bit
Speaker A
creamy, we won't mention brands, but a bit white. There you go, a bit milky, a bit lactic. You add a few leaves, either basil or rosemary, and green fruit olive oil. And the cheese doesn't taste the same.
Speaker A
And the olive oil becomes an ingredient ; it becomes an ingredient that balances the fat of the cheese.
Speaker A
Sweetness. Back in the day, my grandmother would add either honey or the jam she made. And in fact, you can cut that sweetness of the honey or jam with either some leaves, with green tea , with basil or rosemary leaves, or
Speaker A
with green fruit olive oil. I see. Well, that clearly makes me want to taste it. So let's go.
Speaker A
Go ahead. Go ahead. Open your mouth. You're going to cough, I'm telling you right now, that's normal. And you'll see, after a moment, your palate will be clean. There won't be any lingering fat.
Speaker A
Oh yes, it's spicy. It's spicy. Yeah. Wow, it's spicy. You have a bitterness— so, for the record, I'm sorry. I'm about to cause a studio incident.
Speaker A
Thank you very much, technician. So, as for me eating Pigot olive oils eating bread. Eat a tiny bit of bread with no, but just some, and yes I had some So, what you have is called a kinesthetic sensation.
Speaker A
The, the kinesthetic is a, it's a burning sensation. Yeah actually that you really feel in your throat. It is so loaded with antioxidants that your this signal that is sent, which your body doesn't recognize, sends information to the brain, and the brain
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sends it back to you, materializing it, signaling it as a burn in the throat.
Speaker A
When we taste olive oil, after 6 or 7 we stop because our throats are burned.
Speaker A
Actually, there is a very high load of polyphenols, of antioxidants. What you look for when you buy creams or when you eat blueberries or when you, no matter what, which is good for the, the , the fight against cell aging, uh, we
Speaker A
have it in olive oil, in this one. But for the record, when I started making my olive oils, the first ones I made, I love the Picual variety and I love early harvesting. So I made an olive oil as I considered it perfect. That
Speaker A
was 15 years ago. I went to see several chefs. I still remember a Parisian man I like a lot. And he tasted it. I almost killed him, just like I almost killed you there, because it was much greener, much more bitter, much more
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pungent. It was already burning on the lips and in the mouth because it was really very green. And he looked at me with a lot of empathy and a lot of kindness, and a bit of dismay too. He told me, "But
Speaker A
what do you want me to do with your olive oil?" And so I understood that, and I didn't sell much that year, by the way. Unfortunately, I lost a bit of money. So my technically perfect olive oil didn't sell because it was too
Speaker A
green; it was perfect. It was a competition olive oil that won a famous contest in Madrid. But the problem is that afterwards, there's the consumer.
Speaker A
That's why objective tasting, as I've done for years, as many great experts will tell you...they are oleologists with one-week or three-day courses they take in France. They will explain to you what is interesting, what is good, what is not good. What interests me
Speaker A
much more is hedonism, and so I had to adapt my fruitiness. I'm not ashamed to say it. I made it a little more commercial, more accessible so that people can consume it as naturally as possible. Yeah, I understand.
Speaker A
Exactly, so I adapted to the consumer and every year, for the record, I get ahead of the ripeness—now that I have clients, I advance the harvests a bit and I re-habituate them, the famous microfiltered Leccino, I re-habituate them to real olive oil.
Speaker A
Yeah, I see. My clients, actually, I bring them along slowly. Well, it's a good challenge for me, in any case. It's a good challenge.
Speaker A
Although, I have to be honest, I went for it full force, right? I just drank it like that. We had prepared some bread to try dipping it in. I still wanted to, you know, be brave, but in the end, I understand why it is so
Speaker A
special. So actually, this olive oil, it is extracted from olives that are green. This one?
Speaker A
Yes. And which was as hard as a rock. Because an olive, that one, it was prepared for eating. But an olive that you harvest—you can go on my website or on social media on Instagram and you'll see, there is a little video of
Speaker A
green olives hanging on the tree. Green olives have very little olive oil. I told you, 10%olive oil yield. They are very hard. You can't even—when you drop them, they don't get damaged.
Speaker A
Oh, yeah. It's when it ripens that it starts to get damaged. So it's really a fruit that is at the very beginning of its life.
Speaker A
Yeah. This is a bit premature even for this oil, actually, in reality. This is very—this was prepared for eating; it was made with brine.
Speaker A
This one was prepared with salt to be able to remove the bitterness and eat it. And the olive that we press in early harvest is really very, very green, and indeed you have to already be a bit of a polyphenol lover, as
Speaker A
there are more and more today, to accept them. But on the other hand, I do understand the pairing with the cheeses you mentioned and all that; it must give a nice little kick.
Speaker A
One this one has been catching my eye since the beginning of the interview. Well, this one will still make you cough a tiny bit, but you'll see, it has a much broader nose. Here we have tomato leaf, and I'd say not much else.
Speaker A
It's an olive oil that I would call healthy. OK. It’s very, very green. This is an Arbequina olive oil that I pressed right at the peak of ripeness.
Speaker A
It was made a year ago, since the harvest is in October or November. I make it in November, when the fruit is truly ripe. And when Arbequina is made well, it has beautiful apple aromas.
Speaker A
Apples? Yeah. Apples. Granny Smith apples. Interesting. You'll see, on the palate, it's...and this is the ultimate tasting olive oil.
Speaker A
You have some, there are a few restaurants that use it. Madame Pic uses it, for example, in certain dishes . For instance, her tomato*pluriel*that she made for years, which was a benchmark dish, she made it with this olive oil, which really has these
Speaker A
aromas. Can I go for it like I did with the last one, or is it okay? Am I safe?
Speaker A
Gently, or we'll hurt you too much. And you'll see in the retro-olfaction, you get Granny Smith and fresh hazelnuts.
Speaker A
Oh yes, incredible. Yeah, but it's succulent. Oh no, this one is truly extraordinary. This one is easy to taste.
Speaker A
Oh yes, it's the olive oil that everyone will love if they enjoy olive oil.
Speaker A
Yes. And there's that little peppery kick that comes in. Yeah. a bit later on.
Speaker A
But it's milder because the olive is ripe. So as it ripened, it lost a bit of its polyphenols. Here we are going for taste much more than health.
Speaker A
I see. OK. OK, I understand. If I wanted to draw a parallel with apples, which we don't think about. The olive is the only fruit that can be pressed when it's not ripe.
Speaker A
Yeah. You take an apple or a plum, it would never occur to you to eat it or press it when it's not ripe. Firstly, because you'd have some gastric issues, and secondly, because it just isn't done. Human culture has dictated that
Speaker A
we wait for ripeness to eat or press it . But if you were to press an unripe apple, you would have an incredible load of polyphenols.
Speaker A
Hm. So, afterwards, you have to digest it, you have to get it through your stomach . But I want to say, it's a matter of habit. Exactly. Take people from the Maghreb, they eat fermented olives, highly fermented, which we could—I
Speaker A
like it too—but which we don't really process anymore and which we don't like . We find it too aged, too fermented in the Middle East as well.
Speaker A
But it's a matter of habit, preparation body metabolism history and cuisine. I mean, for labneh, I’m not going to eat it with something fruity and green; I’m going to eat it with an olive that is softer, a black olive.
Speaker A
A bit aged, a bit fermented, a bit jammy, because that’s what the cuisine calls for. It's the fermentation that invites this type of maturity. You see?
Speaker A
But it’s so important to know the right combinations. Which olive oil for which dish?
Speaker A
There you go. And then, you have what we call a late harvest. So here, you will smell the black olive much more.
Speaker A
Here, we are looking at an olive oil that was picked very late, around December, at Christmas. So we are more into this type of we are more into the olive like this, very—actually, when you look at them on the mats, they are really like this,
Speaker A
and here we have aromas of black olive and walnut. Nutty fruits, here we are already into something fruitier, more matured, more aged. So this is the right one, the right olive—let's say the right olive oil—to eat over mashed potatoes. On
Speaker A
mashed potatoes, you wouldn't put the green one, it's too green. You want to seek out the indulgence of the black olive.
Speaker A
It stands out completely from the other two. Very different, very different. That’s the idea. The idea was to have three varieties of olives and three different maturities so that at least one of them speaks to you. Either in
Speaker A
terms of taste or in terms of seasonality, because in winter you are more likely to go for this. The slightly comforting side, you know, a bit of olive with mashed potatoes, parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes, butternut squash, there you go, for example, and sweet
Speaker A
potato. A sweet potato, a purée, a cream. You add this, a few walnuts on top, some seeds, and it's super soft.
Speaker A
Excellent. So, there is still one common point between the three, and that’s this little bite that we feel.
Speaker A
Now, obviously with the first one, it’s a bite that’s stronger. There’s still a little bit here, though.
Speaker A
Yeah. And that is a good indicator, I find, a good clue because it’s about the quality of an olive oil.
Speaker A
It’s what makes the...Yes. Exactly. That is how you recognize the quality of a good olive oil. It’s thanks to that bite.
Speaker A
There must be balance. What we're looking for is a balance between bitterness and pungency. There has to be bitterness and pungency. The greener it is, the more bitter and pungent it will be. The riper the olive, the less
Speaker A
of that there will be. But there must always be a little bit. Yeah, that's the case with this one. And in our production techniques, in the crusher rotation speeds, in the mixing temperatures, in the extraction methods , we have little tricks, little
Speaker A
techniques that allow us over time—it takes a lot of time to get there, and you have to fail a lot too. We absolutely have to find that balance between bitterness and pungency so they don't overpower.
Speaker A
Yeah. See, you tasted it on its own. If you taste it with bread, you won't have that issue. You dip bread in it, you won't cough.
Speaker A
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, exactly . OK. So this olive oil, it corresponds to those olives.
Speaker A
Exactly. Well-ripened. Yeah. What is your favorite way to consume olive oil, anyway? My "Madeleine de Proust," is that how we say it in French? That's it.
Speaker A
It's bread, a good bread, not an overdone bread with tons of seeds. A whole-wheat bread, but quite simple in terms of taste.
Speaker A
Roland Feuillard’s bread. Roland Feuillard’s bread, a whole-wheat bread with local yeast, yeah. But not overdone. It shouldn't overwhelm everything, because some breads can overpower everything.
Speaker A
There's a great chef who loves bread, who isn't far from Roland's place and who actually works with him. It's Lionel Giraud. I love talking about Lionel Giraud’s cooking. He has two stars in Narbonne. He’s not far from Roland’s. Narbonne is the city with
Speaker A
the most Roman ruins in France, and we’ve found a lot of...There’s a history of bread, and Lionel has embraced that history of bread, and to me, he’s one of the people who showcases it best. And so my personal "
Speaker A
Madeleine de Proust" is whole-wheat bread. Fruity green olive oil, the Lucques, which for me is a little bit greener. I make a small batch for myself that's a bit more powerful and intense, which I can't sell, but I
Speaker A
haven't lost hope. I'll manage to get people to like it one day. Buckwheat honey.
Speaker A
Ah, or eucalyptus. Uh, eucalyptus is really good, organic. And I, I love adding flax seeds.
Speaker A
Hm. That's excellent. So flax seeds, it's a bit strange to eat them like that, but I make myself this little mixture, uh, that or some za'atar.
Speaker A
Some za'atar from Lebanon. And either one or the other, I either make my mixture with honey, flax seeds, and olive oil, and I mix it. Or I take my za'atar and add olive oil and put it on whole wheat bread. That, that is my
Speaker A
bliss. It can be in the morning or for lunch with my black coffee. It can especially be when I'm working. It can be at noon, it can be in the evening, it can be my snack, just like my
Speaker A
grandmother used to make it for me. That is really exceptional and healthy. It's a bit like your version of the Lebanese manouche, I'd say. And actually, your first school of olive oil was your grandmother's kitchen.
Speaker A
Uh, what is the first image that comes back to you when you close your eyes right now and think of your grandmother ?
Speaker A
She was beautiful. She was a beautiful woman who loved many people. Uh, I think she gave love to her children, her grandchildren, and the neighbors.
Speaker A
All the neighbors knew my grandmother. The image I have is of her little vegetable garden with her herb collection. She had thyme and rosemary just about everywhere in the kitchen.
Speaker A
She wasn't very objective, she was Mediterranean. So it wasn't possible to have a dish, whether it was mashed potatoes or meat or anything at all, or fish. There was always thyme or rosemary. So she had this Spanish grandmother apron, not very pretty, but
Speaker A
I found it, I found it beautiful. Well, she was pretty, but it was an apron, you know, blue striped.
Speaker A
Yeah, I see it perfectly. Like all Mediterranean women, I've seen it in every country. And she had herbs in both pockets, thyme on one side and rosemary on the other. And I really loved playing with my grandmother and I
Speaker A
would often put my hands in her pockets to go looking for those scents. And so my fingers would smell of those two scents: thyme, rosemary, and olive oil.
Speaker A
Even if my grandmother wasn't as sharp as big consumers often are, uh, the more you produce in a country the less demanding you might be. I would say that the most demanding people I've met in olive oil tastings,
Speaker A
are Scandinavians and Japanese people. Oh, really! because it's an exotic product for them and so they take their time, they step back, they want to understand it sensorially. They ask me questions that a Spaniard, a Tunisian, an Italian, or
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a Greek wouldn't ask me. Ah, interesting. Because it flows abundantly in Spain. H So my grandmother, she was like everyone else. She had olive oil from the village that was sometimes a little bit aged, a little fermented, but it
Speaker A
smelled like black olives, like the ones from the Maghreb. It was that olive that had been in the sun, that had sat a bit between the tree and the mill. But that's how she liked it. And that's how people, the elders, like it.
Speaker A
So there was always olive oil in the morning, at lunch, everywhere, and she used incredible amounts of it. Sometimes I thought it was too much. But that was her cooking. When she made a pimenton sauce with red bell pepper and pepper,
Speaker A
it was an olive oil-based sauce. There was a lot of olive oil on the rabbit because rabbit was the poor man's meat.
Speaker A
On the mackerel, which is expensive now , but back then, it was the poor man's fish. On bread, on honey. We put it on salads, obviously. And for me, my little thing was being next to my grandfather. I was a bit of a favored
Speaker A
child. I sat next to him and he had a stainless steel dish, one of those old-fashioned ones, with lettuce and tomatoes. There were more tomatoes than lettuce, and a bit of stew. And at the end, everyone had served themselves and
Speaker A
the dish went back to the boss. He was the one who dipped, he was the one who got the juices at the end. And I was next to my grandfather, I would dip the bread at the bottom into the tomato and olive
Speaker A
juices with lots of garlic and onions. There was an enormous amount of garlic and onion. And so I had the right to dip into it and I ate that bread soaked in onion and garlic, which was incredible. Today people pay a fortune
Speaker A
for tapas in Paris to get that same taste. That's true. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother in the kitchen and my grandfather in the vegetable garden.
Speaker A
In any case, you are paying her a very beautiful tribute today. Why was this ritual of bread and olive oil so important to her?
Speaker A
First of all, it was the poor man's dish, bread and olive oil. It was everywhere. That's how they grew up.
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That's how they were fed. Hm hm. There was cheap fish, it was cod that we would soak, that we would rehydrate, that we bought for cheap. Today, since cod has disappeared from the oceans, it's very expensive. But there was cod
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for fish, rabbit for meat because it's an animal that reproduces very, very quickly and so even the poor managed to have rabbits, but let's say it was mostly vegetables from my grandfather's garden. And the vegetables from my grandfather's garden, he had a moped,
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he would go to his garden which was quite impressive. I think he supplied the neighbors with tomatoes, zucchini, and peppers. It was incredible. Yeah, it was a beautiful garden. This man was quite incredible because besides his job, he had five mouths to feed plus
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himself, plus his wife, and so he kept a big garden but there was much more than just for the family. We stored things, we made preserves, we were very frugal, very sober. Yeah, sauces.
Speaker A
Peppers, which we used a lot with potatoes, the Spanish tortilla, the Spanish omelets with onions. So we knew how to produce, we knew how to use, we knew how to preserve, and we knew how to reuse everything throughout the year
Speaker A
. So olive oil and bread are the basis of the entire diet. Like when you go to Tunisia, there is a dish that fascinates me, which is the mechouia salad.
Speaker A
The mechouia salad. But it's such simplicity and it's an art. They are vegetables over there, mainly peppers and tomatoes that you char over charcoal, over a charcoal fire, really the way they do it themselves. You peel them once they are blackened, you
Speaker A
remove the black skin, you put them in a blender or a potato masher like in the old days and you make a slightly coarse, chunky puree with the seeds, because that's what also gives it the flavor. And then, you add olive oil, it
Speaker A
should be swimming in olive oil, and you add of course harissa. Oh well yes, of course. Don't forget the harissa, and you dip the bread in it and you keep dipping. You only eat with that, in fact, it's the whole meal
Speaker A
. It's simple but so good. I have a friend, Nordin Mchi, who is from the south of Tunisia, with whom I shared great years in the olive groves.
Speaker A
We built a mill in Tunisia back in 2008-2009 in Mjez el Bab, where the Jasmine Revolution exploded in Sidi Bouzid. And I remember eating—it actually hurt my stomach—but we ate nothing but bread and mechouia salad, and I was hooked, addicted to that
Speaker A
mechouia salad because it's so good. It was incredible. So, it is bread and olive oil that form the foundation of the cuisine in those countries.
Speaker A
Hm. We could talk about Lebanon. In Lebanon , you talk about Manakish; they put it on everything. Actually, it's the staple. I went to Sbeya in the south of the country; they served me olive oil with just about everything, in the
Speaker A
morning, at lunch, and at dinner. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what's beautiful about this product, it's that it's truly accessible if you want it. Yeah, it's accessible even if we don't produce much of it because we produce less than we consume, it is still
Speaker A
accessible in many countries, even for the poor. That's what I find beautiful about olive oil, actually; beyond the product itself, it's a product that evokes so many memories, is so rich in values, symbols, and history. And that's why I was so happy to be able to
Speaker A
do this interview with you and talk about it, because it's really not just any food. It's something we can eat every day, but it is charged with history and emotion. And precisely at that time, when you were a little boy,
Speaker A
were you aware of what your grandmother was already passing on to you back then ?
Speaker A
No. No. And besides, I had a perfectly normal life like everyone else. School, studies, work. I had a very, very fulfilling professional life that earned me a lot of money, which is not the case today. Because when you're an
Speaker A
olive oil producer, you don't make money. Is that true? No, no, you don't do this job for the money. Hm.
Speaker A
Or else you have to market it, you have to sell it like the people you mentioned in Paris earlier; you have to create a brand with a real [story], or you have to be large-scale. But when you are an olive oil producer, you do
Speaker A
it for other reasons. In any case, for me—I'll speak for myself, not for others—but I did it out of passion.
Speaker A
And it happened. The passion arrived early, at 20, at 20 years old, already as a teenager. I saw this richness, I saw this liquid, I saw this tree that spanned the centuries, surviving earthquakes, illnesses, epidemics, and feeding the population so simply that
Speaker A
it fascinated me—in Mesopotamia, in the Middle East, in the Maghreb, and even here in the Northern Hemisphere, in the West. Truly, it’s a culture that captivated me. I read a lot about it, an enormous amount. And then, when
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I started my professional life, I—I was never a child like the others. You always have a little side, maybe I have a bit of autism in me, a desire to live a life very different from the one lived naturally by human beings today.
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And instead of going on vacation like everyone else to the sea, to a club, or who knows where, it didn’t matter; the first vacation I took—I was a bit tired, actually, because I was working a lot, traveling a lot—I took a
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backpack and went to Lebanon because it’s a country that speaks to me, even though I’m Franco-Spanish.
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It’s a country that fascinated me with its very complex history, which the French don’t know—the Druze, the Maronites, the Sunnis, the Shiites.
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And so, it’s a country that has always fascinated me. I had never had the opportunity to get to know it. So, first vacation, I’m tired, I don’t want to go to the sea with everyone else on the beach with towels piled on
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top of each other, or waiting in line at the supermarket. I took my backpack.
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I went to Beirut, took what we call a taxi, a shared car, and I went to Baalbek, which was the headquarters of Hezbollah at the time. And I asked in Baalbek to be taken to a mill, and they
Speaker A
took me to a mill, and at the mill, I asked the owner, "If you give me food and a place to sleep, I’ll work for you for free for a month." Oh, really?
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Yeah. And I worked for a month and a half for free for them, and I ate divinely well. I slept sublimely well.
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Since he didn’t speak my language, I rested incredibly well because I had nothing to talk about. There were only smiles in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. So, it was of an incredible purity. I learned so many
Speaker A
things from him. What exactly did you learn through this experience? First of all, well, I come from a very, very sober and very, very working-class family. So, humility, we had it naturally. It's rooted in our veins, we have no choice. But there, I learned,
Speaker A
uh, I learned, uh, something quite incredible: resilience. Ah, the resilience of my grandparents during the fight against Franco, I didn't get to experience that. I could only see it through what I was told.
Speaker A
There, I saw the resilience of people who didn't have much but were happy, who listened to each other, talked to each other, loved each other, and had no needs. No need for a handbag, no need for a car, no need for—they
Speaker A
lacked nothing. There were goats, there were orange trees, there were prickly pears, there were tomatoes, there were peppers, there was violet soil as fertile as any I have ever encountered.
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The Middle East is the cradle of agriculture. That's why these lands were highly sought after, highly contested, coveted and especially Lebanon, beyond its access to the sea, highly coveted. The, the Bekaa specifically, the Bekaa Valley, is quite incredible.
Speaker A
It, it runs along Syria and at the end, there's Israel, and it has been coveted by everyone, obviously. It's a magnificent land for crops. You throw a seed and it grows all by itself. You don't need to water it. There's a level
Speaker A
of humidity, there's a luminosity that makes it grow. So I learned, uh, the resilience of these people who, in the wars, uh, they really experienced it up until '86; there were bullets being fired, uh, over there—I saw bullet
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holes on the shutters. It unfortunately still continues today and it doesn't continue for the same reasons, but it's the neighbors who are a bit invasive, but overall, very invasive, but overall I saw the resilience, I saw a culture, I saw
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smiles, I saw generosity, I saw a way of working the land very sparingly. The beginning of my vision of agroecology, there are no pesticides, there are no herbicides, everything by hand.
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We work the land very little, we respect it, we plant, and we don't turn it over like us, the powerful ones, with machines that plow, turning over the soil, oxidizing it, killing the life underground. Over there, I really
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saw the beginnings; they don't conceptualize it that way. Yeah. But in any case, they had a very agroecological, very organic agriculture. They don't have the money to buy pesticides and herbicides. And even if it occurred to them, or even if
Speaker A
it were offered to them, it wouldn't cross their minds, because there are enough birds to kill the flies, to prey on the flies that we killed the birds for. The land is extremely fertile. We don't need to add fertilizer for things
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to grow. In fact, they maintain this fertility. So, they created in me—I was in a clever family. Uh, they fostered in me this upbringing that was already a little curious, nonetheless.
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I had been an environmental activist since I was 17 or 18. But they sparked the beginning of agroecology in me. And that was upon returning from Lebanon.
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First, I did that for 10 years in 10 different countries. Wwoofing, as they call it now. By the end, it was obvious I wasn't a student. I had said I was a student at the beginning, which wasn't true. But at thirty-something, people
Speaker A
understood I wasn't a student. People said yes anyway. So I traveled through all the Mediterranean basin countries.
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I was in Cappadocia, I was in Greece, I was obviously in Spain, and in my own country in several places. In the Maghreb, in Meknes, in Fez, in Algeria, in Little Kabylie, in Tunisia, where I built a mill.
Speaker A
Ah, you’ve traveled quite a bit? Yes, I know quite a lot, but I’m always talking about the olive tree. So the scope is a bit narrow, you might say. But it was my passion. It was my ball of yarn that I unraveled. I met
Speaker A
brilliant, kind people who gave to me. Sometimes I harvested olives, sometimes I drove the truck bringing the olives, sometimes I was at the mill at night with the miller. So I learned, I saw different machines, I saw old-fashioned
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millstones, I saw machines that were already a bit more modern. And so I trained myself thanks to all those people who will stay with me when I leave this planet, with their images. I could name them all for you one by one.
Speaker A
During those 20 years spent traveling to encounter the olive tree, what inspired you the most? Well, first, I observed the resilience of the tree. I was lucky enough to go, for example, I don't know if you remember the
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earthquake in L'Aquila in the Abruzzo region. I went to help the people there because I had visited a miller who had kindly hosted me, and his entire mill had collapsed. I went to Homs, which Bashar al-Assad bombed with mustard gas
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to eliminate. uh uh it's hard to eliminate uh any capacity to feed the populations. The pretext is to say there are terrorists, but the truth is that you're removing the means to feed them. When they uproot olive trees in
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Palestine, it's not because there's something underneath, it's because they are removing any possibility of cultivation and food. So we won't get into politics, but what struck me a lot is seeing the paramount importance this tree had in the middle of people's diet
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and in people's lives. But I still have the impression that it touches you, what is happening in this region that you love, that you cherish since you knew it.
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Which one are you talking about? Lebanon, the Middle East, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, where we also find the olive trees that you love so much.
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uh that must shock everyone. It's just that I don't put a political value on it, even if I am someone very committed to ecology, but obviously when you see populations who only have that to live on with three goats,
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with a few vegetables, but mainly the oils, the cooking is done with that. All the cooking is done with that.
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Everything. You have dairy products, olives, and vegetables. That's it. Meat is once every 10 days, every 15 days.
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There is still, uh, when you remove, uh , when you eliminate, when you destroy, when you uproot trees and therefore you prevent, you remove any possibility of feeding a population, that's called, that's called eliminating a population.
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Yeah. you make them you make them leave . So yes, I was marked by that, by this commitment of the people towards the olive tree and what the olive tree gave back to them.
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Uh it's a sober olive tree, it's a sober tree sorry. The olive tree drinks very little water when it is planted.
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By the way, does an olive tree look like that? Yes. There, you have a thousand-year-old olive tree and and you have you have a small terrace, see.
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So here, we are in a very traditional olive tree region. That is an olive tree that is magnificent. Besides, it is well-pruned because it is very old.
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So it's not at the end of its life. However, it is at the end of its fruit production productivity. That is a tree whose metabolism, like an old person, is very slowed down. It gives a few fruits, a few leaves, a few fruits. It
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lives, it will live, it will eventually perish one day, that one. But this one, it carries all the traces of history.
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It is thousands of years old. Just realize what Milan is. Yeah. It's incredible, isn't it?
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It's incredible. It is planted in soil where there is very little water. You see the vegetation around it, it's Mediterranean, even desert-like. And the oil is there.
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Hm. So, it's a tree that is quite incredible because its roots can go three or four meters down. It goes to find the little water it has. A tree knows how to protect itself; when you are in Andalusia or the Maghreb and
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it's very hot—it's 45 degrees right now. It’s 47 degrees today in Córdoba. It shuts down in summer, meaning its metabolism slows down. Ah!
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And in fact, that keeps it from being in danger. So for a month or two, it protects itself. That's why the harvest is in France, by the way, even though it should arrive later. It arrives before Spain because for a month or two
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, it didn't work. I see. So, it's a tree endowed with exceptional intelligence and cellular memory. An example I often cite to farmers, because I give them little tricks, little tips. A fruit tree, any fruit tree—a plum tree, an apple tree
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, a pear tree—can die from a hormonal imbalance while fruits are on the tree.
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I have seen plum trees die. I have seen apple trees die with rotten apples, you see them brown, meaning it made the fruit without preserving itself, and it died. It didn't survive because making fruits is a bit like having a child. It
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is a crazy amount of energy the being must deploy. So it's the same for a tree. A tree is a living being, vegetal but living. It doesn't say "ouch" when it's in pain, but it is alive.
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And so, what about the olive tree? The olive tree will never die for the sake of its fruits. It will not produce fruit. If it takes a hit, either a big heat shock, a heatwave, or hail, the following year it knows, it remembers;
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it will not produce fruit, it will preserve itself. So it actually has a memory.
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It has a cellular memory. That fruit trees do not have. Incredible. Which function like fixed machines.
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And I would like to know where the oldest living olive trees are today and what their longevity tells us.
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Well, first, olive growing comes from Asia Minor, so it comes from the Middle East. Uh, so the first, the oldest roots that we find, are found in the Middle East. Uh, Terre Richard, we discovered very, very old roots in
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Tunisia and, incidentally, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, in his film*Home*— which I love and recommend, it’s a few years old now, but I never tire of watching it—there is a moment where he films the olive trees; he films the geometry of the olive trees in Sfax.
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Ah! And so, in fact, the Tunisian olive groves, uh, which were largely structured by the Romans, who made it into an orchard, uh, we have many thousand-year-old trees. So, I would say the oldest ones are probably found in the Middle East, even if the oldest
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roots were found in the south of Tunisia. And what does their longevity tell us?
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Because you said it earlier, an olive tree can live up to 1,000 years. Olive trees, they still have, it's really the trace where prehistoric animals didn't remain, the trees remained.
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Yeah. Meaning we know today that this tree has crossed centuries and millennia. So it tells us that it is one of the rare traces we have of the past, uh, that we shaped.
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Hm. That accepted to let itself be shaped a little, not too much because it is still quite free to do what it wants.
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It accompanies, and what makes me a bit sad today is to see that we can't find producers. We are losing farmers in France; we went from 2 million—I'm speaking of France because in Spain there are still a few—but we went,
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for example, from 2 million farmers to 400,000 farmers. There, a little less than 400,000 now, and they're announcing 200,000 farmers in 10 years.
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So I don't know how we're going to eat. What surprises me a bit, and what makes me a bit frustrated, is to see that we don't give ourselves more means to plant these types of trees, like almond trees, and to make them a basis of our
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diet, if only to allow future generations to get by, because I don't believe that, for future generations, food will flow in abundance. Hm.
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So what it says is, if we watch it suffer a little today because of us, it’s a bit our bad path, us human beings.
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Ah. That we are taking, that I spoke to you about, pulling out olive trees, gassing them with mustard gas, bombing them with trees for gardens. You have some lovely gardens in big cities. You have big houses or small houses with olive
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trees that were uprooted to be replanted in the front garden. What a shame! Yeah, that’s powerful stuff you're telling us, huh. We talked about the culture, the production, the tree, olive oil, and many things. I’d like to know what science says about the
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benefits of the olive tree? What do we know today? The olive tree is likely one of the greatest sources of antioxidants on the planet. Whether in the vegetation waters found in oils when you extract them, or why we
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don’t eat an olive straight from the tree—it’s bitter and quite unpleasant to eat. There is a vegetation water, a black water inside that we extract. You can find it in mills, and it smells very strong. There is an extreme concentration of
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polyphenols. The most significant sources are olive oil and the olive fruit itself. And lastly, there are the leaves. Personally, I often make a little herbal tea or warm water infusion with leaves that are loaded with antioxidants and polyphenols. The
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leaf is underutilized, it is not being worked with. Uh, the vegetation waters aren't being processed today either.
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So science hasn't gotten involved yet because we haven't asked it to. I would love to do it, but it needs to be funded, too.
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It has to be funded. It takes time, money, and it needs to be initiated. It's easy , but funding it is another story, as is finding a market for it. But I think we are just at the beginning; realize,
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I am at the point of creating a supply chain and planting olive trees because we don't have enough here to work with, if we can call it quantity, regarding olive oils. We are at the basics of what we need to develop in our country.
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So in cosmetics, we are truly at the beginning of what will be done, I think , for future generations. But it’s a tree that has enormous resources. For example, the olive pit, the byproduct, the pit. I discovered the other day
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that Barcelona was tearing up its asphalt because you understand that in the city, the streets could reach up to 61 degrees in mid-summer. They were tearing up the asphalt in Barcelona to replace it with conglomerates of vegetable sources and pits.
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All right. Which will serve as road surfacing. Tests are being conducted. It is also used in animal feed. We also use it in tartan compounds instead of latex, which isn't good for the planet, for athletic tracks or children's
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playgrounds. So we are at the very beginning, and there aren't many people who want to look into this because there isn't much olive oil. We fund ourselves quite a bit with olive oil. There is no one who wants to invest or replant olive trees
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like the Spanish are doing. They are the only country that is really developing a real economy, a very broad sector, for decades, and they are starting to look into the science a little bit.
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After 20 years of explaining that Spain knows how to produce olive oil better than we do, why did you decide to plant hundreds of hectares of olive trees here in France?
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To try to find something other than olive oils at 40 or 50 euros? Now, that won't please those who sell them for 40 or 50 euros, but that is the reality.
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And then, to try to adapt to a climate change that is really hurting the southern regions, the Maghreb, and Spain. Right now, as I speak to you, in Tunisia, it is 50 degrees.
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In Sfax. So, the olive trees are fine, but the fruits won't come out—well, they are fine, but they are struggling, and they won't bear fruit next year.
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And so, we clearly have a global production deficit, and the olive tree will move northward. Now, that doesn't happen overnight. Climate change is not something that happens at 8:00 in the morning when you wake up. It is a long
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transition that will cause casualties. I am sorry to tell you that. In the south, we won't be able to live anymore . So, we are forced to move crops further north. Crops from here will no longer survive and will have to move
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north or disappear. We see it; we have trees today that are not adapting. We have crops, we have huge sugar levels in the grapes, abnormal alcohol levels because it's too hot, because there is too much sun. So the olive tree is a
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crop that has always been well-suited to the Mediterranean, therefore to France, to the region that goes from Nice to Perpignan. Historically, I found this in books, and for those who doubt it—because I know there are people in Provence who think it's not
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possible—ChatGPT will give them the answer. The Romans had developed olive cultivation as far as the Ariège.
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which is my birth department, by the way. So it's well beyond the Eastern Pyrenees, well beyond the Aude, Mirepoix, it's a small region that has Mediterranean tendencies but is already in the heart of the Pyrenees. And we find olive tree strains, and the Romans
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had planted olive trees as far as Limoux, the upper Aude valley where I am based, which is magnificent. Red earth, it's going toward Font-Romeu, it's a place, it's Cathar country. So my goal is simple, it's to bring back
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the olive tree to a region that, in terms of pedoclimatic conditions and soil, suits me perfectly. I worked with studies by Serge Zaka, who is an agro-expert—the gentleman with the hat and the feather—who is one of the greatest scholars in our country, an
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expert because he is both an agricultural engineer and a meteorologist, as well as a storm chaser. But he is a quite exceptional guy who has done many studies and theses, and who has put all of that down on paper. He provided me with a
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lot of scientific evidence. We are talking about science. A researcher from Paul Sabatier, the University of Toulouse, also helped me enormously.
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And so, 10 or 12 years ago, it was a project that I had been brewing for a long time. I was producing olive oils in Leucate, I still produce them in Leucate today, but I understood that where I had real added value, it wasn't
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there. It wasn't by producing in Leucate, because there are plenty of others and I'm no better than the rest, so there's no issue there. On the other hand, where I had real added value was in bringing olive trees back to France,
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which had none. With 3%of what we consume, we can consider that we are not a producer. There is a small olive-tourism sector in Provence that is working well, no worries there, and making good money. But bringing back the olive tree structurally, creating
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training, passing on knowledge, conducting experiments, and above all, working in agroecology. Agroecology in France, it doesn't grow on trees.
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It's complicated. It's complicated. We are still the country in Europe that has used the most pesticides and herbicides over the last three years. You can find that on the internet too. So both in olive growing and in agroecology, I knew I
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had something to do, something to contribute. So, I am just a worker. I am a caretaker, I am the one who opens the door, I am the one who is kickstarting the sector. So I succeeded in some things, and I failed at others.
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I ended up with private investors who sometimes came for the wrong reasons, but I got things started; we've already planted a total of 480,000 olive trees and set a machine in motion that will continue. We are around Carcassonne, we
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will be producing olive oils in 2 or 3 years at the most. I speak at agricultural engineering schools about bioregenerative olive growing, and we hope that well beyond me and well beyond my departure, it will allow private owners and communities here and
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there to preserve the olive grove and develop it in the coming decades. Keeping olive oil accessible to everyone is important to you.
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Ultimately, my goal is truly to democratize excellence. Democratize excellence. I think that I think that we are in an era where we can no longer , even for people who have money, just sell a brand and sell a price at an
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exorbitant cost. Just because things are expensive doesn't mean they are good. It makes no sense at all. And also really, I insist on doing more than just organic. Meaning that there is organic, and organic is just a certification. You showed me some
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organic produce earlier. To me, that’s neither here nor there. So you can be organic and not be good. What interests us is really to practice agriculture rooted in living ecosystems , alive with cover crops, diverse hedges, birds that prey on flies, ponds that
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are also havens of diversity, and nesting boxes that we have made by an ESAT, a technical center for people with disabilities. I am committed to being as inclusive as possible. I have a nephew with Down syndrome, so I see
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his mom spending time and suffering a bit from not being able to provide a solution for him. If, in my small project, we can also enable disabled people to make nesting boxes, or perhaps tomorrow—I have it a bit in
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mind—to have them work in the olive groves doing tying, maybe pruning... We'll see based on the levels of disability and the degrees of...It’s a project that must go beyond me, and I certainly hope it does.
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Yes, that's what I was going to say. It’s a project that ultimately goes beyond you, with a real philosophy and beautiful values. So, uh and I hope that people will take it over afterward.
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Yeah, I hope so too. Uh, I would like to know what your work with the olive tree has taught you about life?
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Wow! About life. First, my own resilience. I told you about the people I met.
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Resilience is something that comes up a lot. Yes. Uh, I have often stumbled, you know. I had to, well, I have also often been planted by others, but uh, I had to, I had to constantly be. This tree was always there next to me, and I
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watched it produce every year. And so it gave me a guide, a path, a method, a methodology, a discipline.
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And, and I, for those who know me, they know that when I walk through an olive grove, uh, it happened very early on, by the way, in my grandfather's village in Rustan. When I walk through an olive grove, I remember that time, very young
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, the first time: I feel the transpiration of the trees, I feel energy. I am, I am imbued with this energy that the tree gives off. I don't necessarily feel that all the time in the forest. I love the forest. I walk in the forest.
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I am an agroforester. I practice a very specific type of agriculture. But what the olive tree gives me in this sensory transmission, is something special. Yeah, it's very powerful.
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Hmm, it's very powerful. And then in life's events, I have tried to behave as uprightly as him as much as possible.
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These are beautiful life lessons that you are sharing with us. Thank you so much, Alexis. It was fascinating to conduct this interview. Now, I will honestly admit that we perhaps asked 20 %of the questions we had prepared, but
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I let myself be guided by your story, your speech, and your experiences. So, it doesn't matter. What I might suggest to those listening, if they're interested, why not do a second episode to ask the other questions that are there. There are still a lot
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of them. With great pleasure. In any case, thank you very much, Alexis. If ever, uh, someone wants to know more about what you do, uh, to follow you, to follow your work, where can we find you? Well, first of
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all, we try now, I have a small team, we try to animate our social media with content, meaning not just product promotion, including YouTube. Uh, we're currently filming, as you can see, a video for the Top 50 Farmers, since I
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was elected this year, the only Frenchman, uh, it's a selection of the 50 best regenerative and organic farmers.
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Congratulations. So, there are three Spaniards, four Swiss, five British, and only one Frenchman. So, I'm very, very happy about it. And so we have to communicate a little bit.
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We've made videos, we've tried to keep our social media active with content. If you go there, you'll see the hardening of the pit. You'll see the tree with its properties. We try to provide interesting content. We try to
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do that. We're not always good, but we try to do it. Uh, that's for the information part. People can send me, send us messages if they have doubts or questions. We don't hesitate to answer because we like it.
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We like people. So, I like kind people and I try to be that way too. So, I try to give my time, and finally, to buy it , you can buy it either online or increasingly in stores. We talked about
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La Grande Épicerie in Paris, which is the place to be, and we are among their best sellers there, by the way, if we listen to them and if they are telling us the truth.
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And if you want to taste these exceptional olive oils in organic stores, you will find us now more and more at Satori, at Bio c 'Bon, at Biocoop, at Marcel et Fils; we are developing gradually, having 400 or 500
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stores now, I believe. And some cheese shops, thanks to our friend Christian Gier, MOF, Best Craftsman of France, who distributes us in cheese shops throughout France and at greengrocers. We are slowly starting to have a solid network, and if we're
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not in your village or city, you have the website alexismunos.com, and we deliver to your home. Uh, shipping costs aren't very expensive, and things usually go well since customers reorder .
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And you said it, Alexis Munoz, because you take full responsibility for your work, for what you do.
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So the address is Alexis Munoz. My name is Munoz with an' o ', and yes, I am quite happy to put my name on these products that I produce for you.
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Thank you for this fascinating interview, and I wish you much success in all your future projects.
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You are very kind. Thank you very much.
Topics:olive oilolive oil qualityolive oil industryolive oil mythsAlexis Munosolive oil productionolive oil marketingextra virgin olive oilolive oil tastingolive oil expert
