Italian olive oil -- not from Italy

[james]

Wally,

I have put out some requests to food pro's and restaurants in NorCal, and will let you know what I find.

Your comment on non-Italian Italy olive oil is right. The olive oil laws let bottlers say where the oil was bottled (Italy) and not where the olives come from (typically Spain, Turkey, etc.) So much of the Italian olive oil (particularly in the states) isn't really Italian. There was a mini-scandal last year and a number of newspaper articles written about it. This year, a number of bottlers get the marketing aspect of this, and are adding "100% Italian" to the label when they can.

I have a couple of olive oil pages on the FB.com site, if you are interested.

http://www.fornobravo.com/Cook/Ingre.../oliveoil.html
http://www.fornobravo.com/Cook/Ingre...noliveoil.html

Also, have you worked in pizzerias in Italy? I think everyone would enjoy hearing about your pizza oven cooking experience.

James

[Yahoo-Archive]

Wally,
I know that there are many good brands of San
Marzano's here in the US but, like you said, there are
also many imposters. There is one brand that is
called San Marzano and the tomatoes are grown in
California. Isabella imports to the US. As for Olive
Oil I think it is much the same story. Many brands
that import through Italy so they can claim to be
Italian but are actually made somewhere else.
Brad