Day 15 - The Olive Oil Journey

Day 15

Valencia, Spain | November 8th, 2022

12:15 am I pass out

3am I have a dream and it ends with a policeman shining a light in my face. The reality was a hostelgoer was entering the room and shining his iPhone flashlight straight in my face.

7am: same f***g person's alarm is going off. After 3 minutes I climb out of my bunkbed to wake the guy up. Disgusting. I was in REM. This was the "you get what you pay for" moment of the 15 Euro / Night Hostel.

7:09 as I'm falling back asleep somehow. ALARM. HE SNOOZED! At he loudest possible ringer setting! Like what are you doing bro. I just woke up and started catching up in Blogs. 40 minutes later…live reaction:

OMG the alarm just went off for a 6th time as I'm writing this in bed wtf. Moving on

7th alarm by this guy holy mf s**t

Day 2/5 of Valencia Olive Oil Class

Some quotes from morning lecture:

"Olive Oil is not a medicine, it's a food" - this was a reference to the super high polyphenolic olive oils hitting the market.

During tasting: "these olive oils - if you don't want, you don’t have to taste" - referring to the super rancid oils they had us taste for training - "once in a lifetime, you could taste it, it won't harm you…It's not poisonous"

Today's guest lecturer, Juan Barral, is a modern producer of Olive Oil. He operates his family farm which includes all elements of operation including grove management, milling, bottling, and storage. I respect people like Juan that deeply know the history, quality optimization, environmental impact, and marketing of Olive Oil. They keep the industry moving in the right direction. He checks all of those boxes.

We had lunch and rounded the day of with tasting some more oils.

Quick Flashback to 2019, I was studying abroad in Copenhagen and I had a free week and did a 10 day Solo (ish) trip through Spain (could find a pic or two on the @jackgrunberg Instagram). San Sebastian was my favorite city of that trip and honestly all of abroad. I visited both Bilbao and San Sebastian (both part of Basque Country) with a friend. This area of Spain is best known [foodwise] for their Pinxtos. Imagine a Wedding cocktail hour with toothpicks in every bite of food, then you took that food and placed it on a bar in every single restaurant in a city. That's the concept of Pintxos, they're the best..

I finally come across a Pinxtos restaurant after 15 days and had to stop for some snacks. Check out the pics on the @extravirginguy Instagram.

I did some more work then bar-hopped with some people from the Hostel. The lowlight of the night was getting to a bar that served me Guinness in glass. It was $4! Which is more expensive than the Guinness Draft I had the next night! Purely Criminal

1 Olive Oil Takeaway

You could find high-quality Olive Oil from Spain, Italy, Tunisia, Greece, USA Croatia, Portugal, Albania, Turkey, Morocco, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Peru, Argentina, Chile, South Africa, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

-Jack

Thank you for reading and welcome to the blog! I'm traveling through Europe on a quest to find great Olive Oil.