Tasting New Olive Oil

My Olive Harvest Adventure tour features tasting Olio Nuovo (new olive oil).  One way to test and taste olive oil is with “la prova del pane” (the bread test) or the ritual of the fett’unta (oiled slice), a simple ceremony that celebrates the new olive oil harvest each year.

On my Olive Harvest Adventure tours, we taste olive oil  at sagre (festivals), at frantoi (olive mills) or at the Villa. 

Sagre (Festivals): 

Pan Olio (Olive Oil Festival) in Panicale

Frantoi (Olive Mills):

In Umbrian and Tuscany, neighbors and friends of a community will gather together with their new freshly pressed oil, grill sliced bread over a fire, rub the bread slice with a clove of garlic and then proudly drizzle the bread slice with the new oil.

Drizzling olive oil

You may think that this “recipe” sounds like a lot like a basic bruschetta and you are right. Fett’unta and bruschetta are two words for the same dish, although the term, bruschetta is more widely adopted. The difference is that fett’unta (well-known in Florence) puts the emphasis on tasting the olive oil itself while the word bruschetta (well-known in other parts of Central Italy) is intended to emphasize the charring or burning of the bread. Bruschetta typically adds another topping to the olive oil and bread.

At the Villa:

Back at the Villa, on my latest tour, one of the guests toasted the bread over a fire in the kitchen; another guest   drizzled the bread with olive oil and topped the bruschetta with black kale.

Grilling bread over a fire

Drizzling olive oil on the bread.

Topping the bruschetta with black kale (sautéed in olive oil with onions and garlic)

Bruschetta with Black Kale