Why We Chose It: Heritage Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Why We Chose It: Heritage Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Because once you taste olive oil that is truly fresh, ordinary olive oil becomes very difficult to forget.

There are certain ingredients that divide life rather neatly into before and after.

For us, olive oil is one of them.

Before you taste exceptional olive oil, it is easy to think of it simply as something used for cooking.

Then you encounter the real thing.

Green.

Fragrant.

Peppery enough to catch slightly at the back of the throat.

Suddenly bread and olive oil no longer feel like something served while waiting for dinner.

They are dinner.

That realization is ultimately why Flamingo Estate’s Heritage Extra Virgin Olive Oil earned a place at Lello.

The Standard Began in Italy

Our relationship with olive oil changed in Italy.

There was nothing particularly complicated about the experience.

Fresh oil.

Good bread.

Perhaps some cracked pepper.

But the intensity was unforgettable.

The color seemed almost impossibly green. The aroma was alive. And then came that characteristic peppery finish that announces genuinely fresh oil.

It established a standard that stayed with us.

Since then, we have looked for oils capable of creating that same reaction.

This one did.

Remarkably, we found it not in Tuscany or Puglia, but in California.

An Old Grove in Ojai

Flamingo Estate’s Heritage Extra Virgin Olive Oil comes from a multi-generational family farm in Ojai, California.

The oil is made by Philip Asquith, a fourth-generation olive farmer and guardian of extraordinary old groves.

Some of the trees producing the blend have been standing for generations.

That history matters.

But old trees alone do not make exceptional olive oil.

What happens to their fruit matters even more.

Picked by Hand. Pressed Immediately.

Olives begin deteriorating once they leave the tree.

That means speed between harvest and milling is critical.

Here, the olives are gently picked by hand, hand-selected and taken directly for cold pressing.

There is no leisurely journey through warehouses.

No waiting around for convenience.

The objective is to preserve what existed in the fruit at the moment it left the tree.

Freshness.

Aroma.

Flavor.

And the naturally occurring polyphenols that give excellent olive oil some of its characteristic bitterness and peppery intensity.

That immediacy is one of the principal reasons we chose it.

The Blend Is Part of the Story

The oil brings together distinctive olive cultivars, including varieties with deep Mediterranean roots that are unusual to encounter growing in the United States.

The result is not a timid oil.

It is luminous and green.

There is fruit.

There is grassiness.

And then comes the pepper.

Not harshness.

Pepper.

There is an important difference.

That gentle burn at the finish is precisely the characteristic we look for in a fresh, expressive olive oil.

It tells you that this bottle is alive.

Why Lello Chose It

Because olive oil is too important to be anonymous.

We use it constantly.

We pour it into pans.

We finish pasta with it.

We dress tomatoes with it.

We drizzle it over eggs.

We dip bread into it.

We roast vegetables in it.

And sometimes we simply pour a little onto a plate and taste it.

If an ingredient appears in our lives that frequently, choosing an excellent version seems less like extravagance and more like common sense.

That is very much the Lello philosophy.

Spend less attention on things that do not matter.

Spend considerably more attention on the things you touch, taste and use every day.

Freshness Is Luxury

Olive oil is not wine.

Age is not the objective.

Freshness is.

That is why we pay attention to harvest dates.

It is why we care about how quickly fruit reaches the mill.

And it is why we like knowing where the olives came from.

A beautiful label can tell you very little about what is inside a bottle.

A harvest tells you much more.

The best olive oil should feel vibrant rather than tired.

This one does.

How We Use It

Almost everywhere.

But if you have never tasted it before, begin with bread.

Not because bread and olive oil is particularly inventive.

Because it removes distractions.

Pour a little oil onto a white plate.

Notice the color.

Smell it.

Taste it.

Then tear a piece of warm bread and drag it through the oil.

Only after that would we start cooking.

Use it over tomatoes with good salt.

Finish grilled vegetables.

Pour it over white beans.

Drizzle it onto eggs.

Use it with pasta.

Let it run over a piece of fish just before serving.

Or combine it with an exceptional balsamic and allow two extraordinary pantry ingredients to do almost all the work.

The Bottle Should Not Be Saved

There is a temptation with beautiful or expensive ingredients to preserve them.

We disagree.

Use the oil.

Good olive oil does not improve because you admired the bottle for eighteen months.

Invite people over.

Open it.

Cook with it.

Put it on the table.

Finish the bottle while it is vibrant and begin another.

The luxury is not possessing excellent olive oil.

The luxury is eating it.

A California Expression of an Ancient Tradition

Perhaps one of the things we love most about this oil is that it challenges an assumption.

Exceptional olive oil does not belong exclusively to Europe.

The tradition may be ancient, but terroir travels.

Mediterranean olive varieties planted in California soil, tended by generations of farmers and handled with extraordinary care can produce something with its own identity.

Not an imitation of Tuscany.

Not California pretending to be Italy.

California olive oil with enough confidence to stand beside the oils that taught us what great olive oil could be.

That deserves attention.

The Lello Test

If the packaging disappeared tomorrow, would we still want what was inside?

Absolutely.

If we had guests arriving for dinner, would we put it on the table?

Immediately.

Would we use it ourselves when nobody was coming over?

Most importantly, yes.

That is perhaps the highest compliment we can give anything we carry.

Because Lello was never intended to be a collection of things that merely photograph beautifully.

It is a collection of things worth living with.

And this is one of them.

That is why Heritage Extra Virgin Olive Oil earned a place at Lello.

Because sometimes luxury is nothing more complicated than bread, salt, and olive oil good enough to make you stop talking for a moment.

Why We Chose It is a continuing series from The Lello Journal, telling the stories behind the products that earn a place in our collection.