Olive oil is trendy. It's healthy. It's good for you. It cheers the old and makes children grow. Even the French have started using it. Olive oil is beautiful and good, and it does you good. So goes the refrain. And hiding behind it are a great number of oils of dubious taste, mainly the "big brand names" with a massive supermarket presence.
The mass olive oil industry has a vested interest in riding the trend, without giving away too much information about the product to the consumer consumption increases, while the industry succeeds in selling a great quantity of oil that comes from who knows where and is made who knows how. And supermarket shelves continue to be stocked with *Extra Virgin* oils that are somehow cheaper than standard olive oils ah well, the mysteries of the market
Personally, I believe in the possibility of obtaining a balanced oil, smooth, round, of intense flavour but neither sharp nor bitter, though it might have an entirely pleasant touch of lightly bitter elements, as of spice because it is gleaned purely from olives picked at that perfect moment (and not from leaves or soil); an oil with integrity, fragrant, inviting and clean, the result of immediate, rapid processing of freshly picked, well cleaned olives. So here's the regional list of olive oils selected by Esperya.
And then there's vinegar - balsamic or not, from wine or not - a product that, thanks to balsamic vinegar, is receiving a well-deserved and indisputable revival of interest. Esperya is assembling a geographically arranged list of vinegars, a sort of map made up of different histories and traditions, brought together in the case of vinegar by the role that Italian cuisine has assigned to it - to provide the ultimate surprising twist.