Day 17 - The Olive Oil Journey

What happened at the University of Virginia (UVA) is beyond words. It's one of those things that people see all over social media and the significance of the tragedy actually gets discounted. No words could repair the damage that has been done. Those 3 players families, childhood friends, middle school teammates, high school teammates, college teammates, coaches, teachers, classmates, and all the other people that have supported them on their way up to a D1 Football program will always have this void in their hearts. These warriors worked their tail off their whole life, and for it to end so prematurely is disgusting. As a UVA 2020 graduate myself, I cannot imagine being on grounds for an event like this. Please take a minute out of your day and think of Devin, Label, and D'Sean.

Day 17

Valencia, Spain | November 10th, 2022

When I do solo extended stays in non-peak travel times, I typically book part of my stay at one location and leave the rest of the time open in case of issues at the first place.

Forgot to include this yesterday, but I had nothing booked for the final 2 days in Valencia, and when I woke up yesterday morning, I was done with the first hostel. I switched and long story short, win. The new hostel even served up a free dinner at night which was a great way to connect with other people in the hostel.

Ok back to today, I wake up in the new hostel in peace and finally got a nice night’s sleep. No pics but I think I ran out of time for breakfast…whatever.

Day 4/5 of Valencia Olive Oil Class

Today's class was taught by a German Olive Oil Tasting expert, Christoph. Very interesting material taught in class, here's 1 takeaway.

If your tongue can't sense a bitter taste, you're automatically rejected from tasting panels. Discriminatory a bit?

Honestly this makes sense, I had two very high quality, but bitter oils the other night when out for dinner. It's a very significant element of the "tasting spectrum" (definitely not the proper term) of the oil.

Back to present blog day - throughout my stay I was told several times to go to the ceramics museum in the old city of Valencia. I had 5 free hours after class so I decided to go, and it was quite beautiful. Unfortunately, though, I'm still indebted 1 Euro to the security guard who "lent" me $ for locker use as I had no cash. By the time I left the museum, he was off his shift.

The preservation of artifacts, furniture, and paintings had my head spinning. I appreciate history now 100x more than I used to, and this carries to all the arts. Maybe it’s the social media posting, writing, graphing design work…who knows.

After the museum I did laundry - in the hostel. No more sunglasses and walking to laundromat incidents. My only issue was making change for my 20 as the hostel didn’t have any coins. After 10 minutes of searching I got change and did my laundry. Sadly I had to miss the Valencia soccer (football) game. It was an easy decision: I couldn’t be the only one to miss an organized class dinner. Though when my cab drove by the packed stadium, I had serious FOMO.

30 seconds after I got out of the cab while on the phone with my mom, my left pocket felt a bit emptier than usual - I left my airpods case in the cab (airpods were in ears though). Classic.

Dinner was great, I was so happy I attended. And after dinner I had an awesome 25 minute walk with the Turkish professor from my class. Not often do I share deep conversations with experts in history - it was one of my favorite convos of my trip.

Of course the 24 year old in me wanted to try my way at a beach club, but I quickly learn that beach clubs aren’t open in November…surprise surprise. I cab home and hit the hay. Good day.

1 Olive Oil Takeaway

The second Olives come off trees they start to ferment / oxidize, so minimizing the time between picking and crushing is key. However, the reality is that most olive farms don't have mills immediately accessible and must reserve a time or wait in line to get their olives crushed, so the olives must sit around for some time. Many producers let olives sit in a pile in a truck or on the floor, but just like a guy in Football who gets squished at the bottom of a pile, olives endure the same impact – the skin may lacerate and the juice has greater exposure to oxygen, heat builds up at the bottom, etc.

One better strategy I've been seeing is olives being kept in crates before getting milled. In my understanding, the crates limit the weight on the bottommost layer of olives - which is clear given the weight gets distributed at the edges of the crates. Crucial details like this are a must for high-quality Olive Oils.

-Jack

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