Brand new olive oil

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Olio nuovo, newly pressed olive oil, is just in at The Rare Wine Co. in Sonoma. Every year owner Emmanuel Berk goes to Tuscany in November just after the olive harvest and tastes through dozens of oils to choose what he’ll buy for his wine shop and online business.

Like Beaujolais Nouveau, the new oil gets a head start when it comes to celebrating the year’s harvest. Because the taste is so intense and frisky, the new oil has a special cachet, so much so that The Rare Wine Co. flies some cases in each year so aficionados can get it hot off the presses, so to speak.

I always order a few bottles, and revel in making a classic bruschetta, what the Florentines call fett’unta — “oiled bread” — with the new oil. Intensely green, almost iridescent, it should be used lavishly enough that it soaks into the grilled bread. I like white table bread you can get only from the La Brea Bakery location next to Campanile on La Brea. For this, it’s best day-old, cut about an inch thick, toasted and then rubbed with a halved garlic clove while still warm. Place it on a plate and pour the new olive oil over. Season with a pinch of salt. I dare you not to eat two or three.

2008 olio nuovo from a handful of Tuscan estates is priced at $23.95 to $26.95 per 500ml bottle. The spring shipment of regular olive oils (as opposed to olio nuovo) arrives early April. The Rare Wine Co., 21481 Eighth St., Sonoma, (800) 999-4342, www.rarewineco.com.

— S. Irene Virbila