Extra virginity tom mueller ebook

I read in a review of Extra Virginity and I'll be damned if I can remember where, so apologies for lack of attribution and that I must paraphrase , " Extra Virginity is proof that subpar non-fiction is always better than subpar fiction.

Not even Paris can save lousy writing and arrogant affect. So, yeah, Tom Mueller is no Ruth Reichl or MFK Fisher, but he tells a tale of olive oil with such passion and integrity, it's impossible not to be caught up in the story. There are a couple of different things going on in Extra Virginity.

First and foremost is the investigation into the corrupt world of olive oil production and distribution. Mueller's book was born out of a story that he wrote for The New York Times. The unfortunate thing about a static book is that the book ends, but the story does not. Mueller does not go far enough into the investigation. The corruption he reveals surely penetrates the highest levels of Italian government and possibly EU regulatory entities. There is a greater story, a richer and more rotten one.

But Mueller strikes me as a really sweet guy who wants everyone to get along and support best practices by buying only quality olive oil. A worthy goal. Wine- from grape cultivation to production and distribution - is of particular interest to this oenophile. Unrest assured, the wine world is rife with shady business. Just last week I read of an investigation into Soave producers believed to be adding Riesling to their wines to "spice it up. Honest producers and consumers pay the price when the integrity of a beautiful food chain is broken.

The other thing at play in Extra Virginity is an unabashed love affair with this storied, sublime food. It is a narrative designed to seduce those enchanted by all things culinary you know, that icky word, "foodies". Mueller goes straight for the foodie jugular by painting scenes of the Mediterranean countryside, with Roman ruins and medieval farmhouses set in golden fields, presided over by sun-baked farmers and their round-hipped wives, or by chic, multilingual children who return to the family farm after years in high finance or industrial agronomy to embrace the simple life.

Although, it's not so simple. Cultivating olive trees and producing quality oil is hella hard. Many farmers tend orchards that they will not live long enough to see into production, hoping to leave a legacy to their families. Mueller also offers an extensive history of olive cultivation and production and makes a hearty case for olive oil as the world's most perfect food.

I found myself not only craving olive oil at many points, but wrinkling my nose with distaste at the clogging, cloying properties of butter and cheese. Can you just imagine? If you've read Extra Virginity , yes, you probably can. There are some editing problems in Extra Virginity that rankled.

The use of the word varietal with grapes, instead of cultivar or variety , mystified me. Varietal is an adjective; variety is a noun. For some inexplicable reason, variety was used correctly when discussing olives, but incorrectly with grapes. Adjectives and adverbs are flung hither and yon and repeated to eye-rolling effect.

The structure of the book seems haphazard, jumping around in theme and style. And, as I noted earlier, much of scandal is left unexplored. But most importantly, this consumer's eyes were opened and her buying habits were changed.

I've cooked with EVOO forever. My husband worked at an olive orchard and oil production facility in New Zealand and brought home buckets of unfiltered liquid gold okay, liquid green. I've tasted the freshest, most delicious oils I never knew were possible. I understood that olive oil is as nuanced as wine.

But really, I had no idea how complex the issues were and how vulnerable the industry is. Now I know what to look for, which questions to ask, and that my choices have consequences, both for my own health and for the health and sustainability of a noble fruit and its by-products. And like wine, I understand there is a great price to be paid when buying cheap olive oil. Tom Mueller is a big fan.

I can enjoy olive oils from around the world and feel great about my purchases! Tom Mueller maintains an excellent website Truth in Olive Oil that is a must if you are interested in learning more about the options for purchasing quality oils and Mueller's commitment to changing the industry.

View all 3 comments. Aug 01, Kater Cheek rated it liked it. This is the kind of book I usually adore: food, science, history, politics, people. I also adore olive oil. Mueller does a pretty good job of giving the reader or listener, in my case a good overview of the world of olive oil.

Here are the things I learned from this book. One, there are many, many different kinds of olive oil, almost as many olive cultivars as there are cultivars of wine grapes. Like wine, olive oil has been around since antiquity, and has been a stable source of trade in the M This is the kind of book I usually adore: food, science, history, politics, people. Like wine, olive oil has been around since antiquity, and has been a stable source of trade in the Mediterranean for Millennia.

The book talks about amphorae, and why they have their distinctive shape, which I found fascinating sits better on the sides of ships.

It also spends a lot of time dwelling on the slipperiness of oil. Olive oil has historically been one of the most often-adulterated foodstuffs.

Oil barons have been diluting their precious green gold with cheaper oils since the first amphora was crafted out of clay. It hasn't ever stopped, apparently. Although the grade known as "extra virgin" is stringently delineated by European authorities, it is almost never enforced. In addition, olive oil cartels use their political power to shut down any grower who seeks more stringent regulations. Mueller talks about the chemical composition of olive oil, and some of its unique antioxidant properties.

He talks about how it affects the taste of food, how it stores and spoils, and how different varieties and growing conditions affect the taste of the oil. Like bitter beer, complex wine, or scotch whisky, real olive oil is an acquired taste, but its fans fall passionately in love with its complexity and nuances. It's also very good for you. If you have a diet rich in olive oil, you are likely to benefit from huge health benefits--most notably cardiovascular.

So here's the book in a nutshell: real olive oil is an ancient treasure, still made all over the world by fine growers and millers. It's insanely nutritious, has many health benefits, and while it's bitterness and pungency is likely to dissuade the uninitiated, once you catch the oil-fever, you will likely love it forever. However, you are not likely to ever taste real olive oil, because almost everything in the store is adulterated oil, mixed with seed oil or cheaper olive-pumice oil.

No one tests for quality, and if they do, they don't impose penalties on oil-adulterators because cheap, badly tasting canola oil is not a health risk. I recommend this book for foodies and fans of Mediterranean food. Beware, however. I eventually couldn't stand it anymore and had to go out and buy a bottle from Whole Foods. Good thing it wasn't a book about heroine or cocaine. View 2 comments. As someone with the most rudimentary knowledge of olive oil and its history or any kind of oil history for that matter and the naive long-cherished assumption that an Extra Virgin label and an Italian origin were markers of the highest quality and justified the high prices, this book was pretty hard to digest for me.

Featuring excerpts from the case files of s As someone with the most rudimentary knowledge of olive oil and its history or any kind of oil history for that matter and the naive long-cherished assumption that an Extra Virgin label and an Italian origin were markers of the highest quality and justified the high prices, this book was pretty hard to digest for me.

The author's treatment of the cultural and culinary history of olive oil - featuring Odysseus, Mary Magdalene, Prophet Mohammed, a whole host of Egyptian Pharaohs,mesopotamian oil mills, sorcery, Roman oil distribution schemes and a lot more - is jaw-dropping good. The book is also loaded with enough science and latest research that one would anticipate in a book dealing with olive oil.

There is a great deal of information about the cultivars throughout the world - Mediterranean, US and Australia- and their relative merits. A year after this book was written, India joined the olive oil race with several groves planted successfully in arid Rajasthan, and this is heartening provided there is proper regulation. The book is peppered with numerous interviews with traditional artisan Olive oil growers and millers and oil sommeliers around the world, which make for a hard read sometimes but totally worth it to understand the nuances of olive harvesting and the sheer impossibility of the existence of so many low cost Extra virgin brands that adorn supermarket shelves.

The book also sports some cool pics of olive groves, ancient mill reconstructions and other relics. A hard read but completely worth it, since it saturates one with more information than one would ever hope for, obviating the need for any further reading on the topic.

Apr 29, First Second Books added it Shelves: gina. This book contains tales of olive oil bandits — actual people who hijack trucks of pure olive oil so that they can take it and sell it for themselves. This takes place in the present day. How can you not want to read about that? This is a very detailed history of olive oil and the business surrounding it. It was great. It made me surprisingly hungry considering it was talking about oil. The amount of fraud that people get away with in the food industry as a whole blows my mind.

If you're a foodie, you'll enjoy this book. Aug 29, Susan Albert rated it it was amazing Shelves: nature-environment , herbs-plants , china-bayles-research , politics-political-history. Tom Mueller's book opens the bottle and pours out the truth about olive oil: the good, the bad, the rancid.

In a rar-ranging journey through the olive culture, Mueller introduces artisan growers and producers whose livelihoods are threatened by mass production for a global marketplace; chefs, gourmets, and others who are always searching for the true extra virgin; and the fakers whose fraudulent products flood our supermarket shelves. Beautifully written, every page opens another intriguing view Tom Mueller's book opens the bottle and pours out the truth about olive oil: the good, the bad, the rancid.

Beautifully written, every page opens another intriguing view of the world of the olive. Jan 29, Rebecca Stevenson rated it it was amazing. I can tell already that this is going to be one of those books that makes me look suspiciously at everything on a supermarket shelf. In the end, after this fascinating glimpse into the shadowy, often bizarre world of olive oil, I came away with one relief: Zingerman's is still safe. Mar 13, Jeanne rated it liked it Shelves: male-author , s , history , non-fiction , microhistory , italian-author , food , italy , greece , roman-empire.

The topic of olive oil, especially in North America, is not something often spoken of and I believe the author did a good job in spreading the awareness of the fraud that is currently being committed in the industry. Simply put, most of the extra virgin olive oil on supermarket shelves isn't extra virgin, some of it isn't even olive oil. But because we grew up with this oil, we can't even recognize what the real stuff is supposed to taste like.

And believe me, there is a difference. I've had the p The topic of olive oil, especially in North America, is not something often spoken of and I believe the author did a good job in spreading the awareness of the fraud that is currently being committed in the industry.

I've had the privilege of tasting olive oil in Provence that was produced on the very property we stayed on. What the author says is true, once you have the real deal you can't go back. It reminds me a little bit of maple syrup vs breakfast syrup. My only real complaint with this book is that it lacks structure, hence my lower rating. Has it been structured better I wouldn't have skimmed the last 60 pages, feeling as if I was reading the same situation in a different location.

If this book had been split into sections dealing with the history, oil giants, smaller producers, etc it would have been much more effective in my opinion. Jul 01, Christine rated it it was ok. Mueller's writing style and anecdotes are generally entertaining, but there is no rhyme or reason to this book. It is repetitive and disorganized. While there are separate chapters with chapter headings and quotes about olive oil of course , they didn't seem tied to the narrative of the text.

He does provide crucial information on supermarket oils and the reasons why they are usually cut with other oils or taken from the "lamp oil" section of he crop and deodorized: it's amazingly cheaper, and Mueller's writing style and anecdotes are generally entertaining, but there is no rhyme or reason to this book. He does provide crucial information on supermarket oils and the reasons why they are usually cut with other oils or taken from the "lamp oil" section of he crop and deodorized: it's amazingly cheaper, and the general consumer is used to an almost tasteless oil.

The bit of information that really is important, to me, is that the healthy properties of the oil can be detected if you feel a "pepperiness" at the ack of the throat after swallowing. Not even the California produced olive oil I recently bought has this peppery taste.

The other problem with this book is that he provides no solution for the consumer. I am guessing that he avoids mentioning specific supermarket brands so that he does not get sued. Mueller dos not tell us in a clear manner what to taste for when testing the oil, nor suggestions of brands that might be unadulterated. At this point, the only two solutions to getting a good olive oil is to go to a specialty shop and hope they are telling the truth, or test out the oils yourself for the correct flavor, which is an expensive undertaking.

Near the end of the book he does say that there are two English language olive oil specific sites: oliveoilsource. He also provides a glossary at the end, but makes no note of it anywhere in the narrative, so you forget to look to the back of he text for definitions.

Overall, I enjoyed Mueller's anecdotes, but wish he really went somewhere with them. I read the hardcover version of this book from the library, and would recommend skimming it if you are interested in the subject, but not purchasing the title. View 1 comment. Jan 21, Cassie rated it it was ok. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book started off promising, and I really did enjoy the style of writing that Mueller uses: factual, but not dry.

However this book was severely disorganized. It very easily could have broken into section based on the businessmen he talked to, or sections on religion, history, business scandal, science et al. It was very disjointed and as such, felt all over the place. There were court transcripts out of nowhere and Mark Twain quotes that didn't really go anywhere.

Extra Virgin olive oil wasn This book started off promising, and I really did enjoy the style of writing that Mueller uses: factual, but not dry. Extra Virgin olive oil wasn't even clearly defined until the end of the book. The first half read with some more-than-basic culinary education necessary.

The vocabulary was lacking. By the end of the novel I felt that I was reading the same story over in a different country: somebody makes olive oil, the government finds out it's not real extra virgin, there's a scandal, nothing happens, and the makers still fondly recall a childhood spent amongst olive tree groves.

Mueller never seemed to present the other side of the argument - simply told stories over and over again of just how corrupt the olive oil industry was. All in all - disappointing.

Aug 11, Brad rated it really liked it. Fan's of Michael Pollan's work will enjoy this. I will not look at all those bottles of olive oil on the grocery store shelves quite the same.

Mar 29, Anna rated it liked it. Informative, quite detailed. Mostly it made me want to pack it all in and buy some land in Greece to grow olives. The goal of all popular non-fiction books is to find a topic that nobody has written much about and then say something about it that is clever and makes it seem vitally important. Novelty, cleverness, and significance. The problem, of course, is that most of the really significant things have already been written about. So what you have are an awful lot of books out there that are trying really hard to take subjects that probably aren't really that important and make them seem important, while al The goal of all popular non-fiction books is to find a topic that nobody has written much about and then say something about it that is clever and makes it seem vitally important.

So what you have are an awful lot of books out there that are trying really hard to take subjects that probably aren't really that important and make them seem important, while also trying to be clever about it.

Results, as you might imagine, are mixed. Extra Virginity is a pretty good example. There's nothing in the book that struck me as flagrantly wrong or misleading as opposed to, say, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind , but it turns out that olive oil is just not that interesting. I did learn a few things, or at least, I heard a few things that seem pretty plausible. The explanation for why olive oil is so much healthier than other oils vegetable, peanut, etc.

One basic way to think about it: olive oil is really just juice. You squish an olive, you get olive oil. The other oils have to be extracted using pretty sophisticated technical processes that involve a lot of solvents, etc.

I was also surprised at just how much money you can make with fake olive oil. One quote in the book compared adulterated olive oil to cocaine in profitability. That seems like a stretch, but if there's another oil out there that is dirty cheap and you can mix it with olive oil and still sell it as "extra virgin" then you're basically printing free money. This explains why it's so hard to get olive oil that is actually, well, olive oil.

So far, so good. I also liked some of the passages about the religious significance of olive oil throughout human history. It is pretty darn useful stuff, if the book is to be believed, with applications from food obviously to lotions soaps and lamp fuel. Then again, I'm not keen to run out and drench myself in olive oil as a lotion or a cosmetic or a fragrance-foundation. Moreover, I have to take Mueller at his word that I would even like real extra virgin olive oil. He's pretty passionate about it, but I can't help but be skeptical.

From where I'm standing, it seems as though we live in a world where the well-off have more money than they have things to spend it on, and we invest an awful lot of energy in creating placebo-effect value. Are super-expensive wines really that much better than regular ones? I don't drink, so I couldn't tell you, but I'm skeptical. Anyway, it was definitely an interesting book, but it was probably about pages of really interesting material spread out over a couple hundred pages of fluff.

It wasn't bad fluff--Mueller obviously did a ton of interviews, and the folks he interviewed were often pretty fascinating--but the book could never figure out if it was cultural history, health, economics, crime thriller, or expose.

What can I say? I picked it up as a cheap Audible Daily Deal and it was worth a few hours to listen to. Apr 03, Rachel Song rated it really liked it. Figured it would be worth finishing, and it was. I knew nothing about oil, now I know something. Pretty short read. I'm pretty sure now I've never tasted proper oil. Apr 14, Danny rated it really liked it Shelves: non-fiction. I've been exploring the local farmer's market recently, coming home with vegetables I have no idea how to cook. When I look up recipes on the internet, they invariably include olive oil as the first ingredient.

Pour in some oil, mince some garlic, saute some onions, and you're in business: This is the lesson I have learned. Alternately, just rub olive oil, salt, and pepper over whatever vegetable you have on hand, roast it in the oven for 45 minutes, and there's your side dish.

It's a little spo I've been exploring the local farmer's market recently, coming home with vegetables I have no idea how to cook. It's a little spooky. Like a magic potion. How did I not realize that olive oil had such mysterious power before?

It begins with beautiful, sensuous descriptions of olive oil and its history in the Mediterranean. More than 4, years of history can be found in each and every bottle of olive oil. But what might also be found in those bottles is a deception. The story quickly turns to underhanded dealings and adulterated oils.

Since the time of the Romans people have been trying to pull a fast one by mixing olive oil with various seed oils, which are cheaper to make. In fact, the author argues that most oil labeled "Extra Virgin" is nothing close. To truly meet that standard it must pass a rigorous battery of taste tests, which it rarely does.

You can read in the book of the many small farmers trying to make a profit and stay honest in this cut-throat world. Even with all of this downbeat news, my mind still wanders to the olive groves of Italy, California, Spain, and Australia. The passion of the people who grow the olives and turn them into oil is contagious.

It's not just a condiment, it seems. Olive oil is a lifestyle for these people. If you'd like to find out more about olive oil, from it's origins to the bottles lining your supermarket shelves, check out this book. It even gives you some tips and sources on buying the best olive oil you can find. For instance: The color of the oil doesn't matter so much, but the bottle should be of dark glass. If your stomach is rumbling for some, check out these books on cooking with olive oil.

Apr 08, Danny rated it really liked it Shelves: library-book , non-fiction. I gotta admit, this should probably be a three-star book, but the descriptive passages of the first section carried me through the rest of the book with boring science and politics and conversations about adulterated food supplies. Seriously, though, we should probably all be worried about how easy it is to adulterate the food supply. But after you're done worrying about that and alerting your congress-persons come with me on a sensual journey However, these producers are being steadily driven from the market: extra-virgin olive oil is difficult and expensive to make, yet alarmingly easy to adulterate.

Skilled oil criminals are flooding the market with low-cost, faux extra-virgins, reaping rich profits and undercutting honest producers, whilst authorities in Italy, the US and elsewhere turn a blind eye. From the feisty pugliese woman of sixty struggling to keep the family business afloat to her industrialist neighbour who has allegedly grown wealthy on counterfeit oil, to Benedictine monks in Western Australia and poker-playing agriculture barons in northern California who make this ancient foodstuff in New World ways, Mueller distils the passions and life stories of oil producers, and explores the conflict, culinary vitality and cultural importance of great olive oil.

Media Extra Virginity. Save Not today. Format ebook. Author Tom Mueller. Publisher Atlantic Books. Release 03 July