Gorgeous olive oil: Rare Wine Co.’s imported Tuscan olive oil; supplies running low

Forget about all the butter we Americans are supposed to be consuming, I’m deep into olive oil practically every meal, lavishing a slab of grilled country bread with the intensely fruity Tuscan oil and sopping up every bit of the remains on my plate.

This is from my annual shipment of olio nuovo (new oil) from the Rare Wine Co. in Sonoma.
The color is an iridescent jade-chartreuse, gorgeous to behold. This is olive oil more as food than condiment. I float a thread on winter minestrone or pasta fagioli, eat halved avocados with a drizzle of the oil, dip artichoke leaves in a little dish of olio nuovo.

I get my fix every year from the Rare Wine Co., which has been bringing in a selection of new oils from Tuscany for almost 20 years now. This year, after tasting the new oils in November, Rare Wine founder Mannie Berk chose oils from half a dozen wine estates in Tuscany. He buys only single estate oils and flies the new oils to California under temperature controlled-conditions as soon as they are pressed and bottled.

This year, Berk writes in the Rare Wine Co.’s newsletter, the harvest was later than usual—at the end of October. Those who were fortunate enough to harvest between Oct. 25 and Nov. 10 avoided the heavy rains that ruined much of this year’s harvest.

And those are the oils Berk picked up for this year’s olio nuovo offering. As a group, they’re gentler and less sharply peppery than in other years. Each one is slightly different, so it’s fun to taste and compare them against each other.

Because of high demand, this year the company is offering only a six-bottle assortment, limit one set per customer: one 500 ml bottle each of Selvapiana, Vetrice, Prunatelli, il Girardino, Cogno “Frantoio” and Monte. The price is $165, plus shipping. Call (800) 999-4342 to order.

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Twitter: @sirenevirbila