San Francisco Chronicle Food Section
Wednesday January 13, 1999

The 'Noses' Know About California's Olive Oil
By Janet Fletcher
Chronicle Staff Writer

In the aroma business, they call them "noses" -- people who create and evaluate scents using their refined sense of smell.

Now the California olive oil industry has noses too. In November, two dozen people passed a rigorous sensory test to become the first official evaluation panel for the fledgling California Olive Oil Council, a private group of growers and producers.

These supersmellers will pass judgement on the oils submitted to the council for evaluation, awarding seals to those that meet the international standards for extra virgin olive oil. Panelists say the program will promote equality among California's olive oil producers and bring the oils international respect.

Not a moment too soon, says Paul Vossen, the University of California Cooperative Extension farm advisor in Sonoma County. Vossen had been working for several years with olive growers and oil marketers in his county, most of them newcomers to this adolescent industry. All saw a niche for high-quality oil from California, but few knew how to produce it.

"Some (oils) were quite awful, to be honest with you," admits Vossen, who spent a 1996 sabbatical in Spain and Italy looking for guidance. "We were going to get an industry started off on the wrong foot. Producers couldn't identify rancidity or any of the other common defects. So I said, "Let's learn what these defects are and learn how to make oils that conform to international standards.' "

Two years ago, Vossen organized a three day class at the University of California at Davis to begin educating growers, marketers, retailers and others about oil quality. A professional taster from the International Olive Oil Council in Madrid taught the 35 attendees how to recognize defects, which is the focus of professional oil tasting. So many people were turned away that Vossen organized a second class a year later, hoping he might find, among the two groups, enough great palates to form a professional tasting panel.

Last September, Vossen and Roberto Zecca, who owns Frantoio restaurant in Mill Valley, went to Greece to be trained by the council as tasting panel supervisors. In October, they invited the previous class participants to three practice sessions, a sort of cram course for a final tasting exam. The participants practiced how to discern, by smell alone, the four dreaded defects in olive oil: rancidity, mustiness, fustiness, (think dirty gym socks) and a vinegary or winy aroma that results from an undesired fermentation.

But as the sniffers learned, it's not enough to find the defect. They also must evaluate its intensity. In the final exam, modeled after the council's technical tastings, tasters faced three flights of 11 oils each.

In each flight, one oil had no defects but the other 10 had the same flaw, and they were lined up in order of the flaw's intensity. The challenge? To put a 12th sample in its proper place in the lineup.

. . .[Thomas] Oden [a chef at Jordan Winery in Healdsburg] and his co-chef, Franco Dunn, were among the 12 top scorers, earning them a place on the California Olive Oil Council panel. . .

"I think people who cook for a living have an advantage", Oden says, "because we spend so much time and energy trying to make focused perceptions. Does this need more salt, more garlic? Is this satisfactory, or is it lacking something?". . .

. . .the panelists [began] meeting regularly to certify California oils and to continue their training. Vossen's goal is to have the tasters recognized by the International Olive Oil Council as an official international panel. . .

. . . Now, Vossen says, consumers can have more confidence in the COOC seal. Although producers don't have to submit their oils and no federal or state laws define "extra virgin". COOC-certified oils will meet IOOC standards for that term: They will have less than 1 percent acidity, no defects and some positive attributes such as pungency and fruitiness. . .