This is not a review of a book I haven’t read: Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Oliv Olivetti. (And I believe, I just bought a review of the oil.) I heard about the book on NPR last Friday (and now I can’t find the show), when they interviewed the author, Tom Mueller. I realized the oil I had been buying for 30 years that I thought was full of hate was not good. He reached out to me in two days to take the joke. The author has not yet; He designed the site “extra virginity” www.extravirginity.com.
The day after I heard the show, I saw some apparently virgin olive oil in Wal-Mart, under the brand name “California Olive Ranch.” It is a green bottle. Oil is not green. Its ingredient list says: “100% barberry, not transplanted extra virgin oil. Contains no trans-fatty acids or things.” Its title reads like the makers above read the book, which means they’re either not having fun. But it smells like the fresh juice of ripe olives, not oil, as olive oil is supposed to smell. I had never hated that strange smell in my life, but I felt it when I felt it. My friend said it smells like olives.
I had always thought that “extra virgin” was an empty marketing gimmick, trying to impose a superlative instead of an absolute. Either she is a virgin, or she is not; which cannot be more of a virgin than another, or a superfluous virgin, which seems to signify an extra-virgin.
I forgot several things: every word on food label means something; that its meaning is workable; there are large groups of advocates who share the meaning of the words. And that, when used absolutely, “extra” means something else: “extra”, as “extra-marital”, “extra-territorial” or “extra-terrestrial”. “Extra virgin,” even without the hyphen, modifies absolutely to say that he is not a virgin, extra virgin, other than a virgin. She was a virgin once, but never a virgin again.
Thus, the other words on the olive labels, which the author thinks, are not vanities or redundancies. It can be said to be “cold pressed”, because “extra virgin” does nothing of the sort. For he asserts nothing except that the oil is not virgin. “Virgin” oil is always cold-pressed or centrifugally extracted, regardless of the work done; “extra virgin” has say what it is.
For thirty years I bought the cheapest virgin or “extra virgin” oil on the shelf because I didn’t think too hard about the words “extra virgin.” It turned out that I was contributing to the problem of low quality olive oil, picked from the fruit instead of the fruit at the peak of ripeness. Oil foul, rancid, deodorized and purified; Then add some extra virgin olive oil and give it color and flavor.
I use the oil for my health; I don’t buy cheap oil. Now I hope the manufacturer of my oil takes “extra” off their label and is proudly virgin.
