Making oil the difference in the world

Giuseppe Grappolini's idea of heaven is a room full of sniffing people - all learning to distinguish between olive oils. One, for instance, may smell of pumpkin or boiled beans and another carry the whiff of freshly cut grass, ripe tomatoes, artichokes, almonds, or apples.

For the Italian olive oil merchant, the differences are as clear as that 'between a small Fiat and a Rolls-Royce'.

'The oil market can be a fraud, because there is a lot of adulteration,' he says. And few are able to sniff it out.

'People do not taste the oils before they use them . . . It seems there is a mental block, a timidness of becoming greasy.' He asks, 'what sense is there in dressing a food if we don't know the dressing?' Grappolini is a third-generation oil baron of the culinary kind, with the food industry's version of liquid gold running in his veins. He not only invented a special taster for olive oil, the Degusto, in 1992, he also initiated a non-profit organisation to promote his passion.

Mico, or the International Movement for Olive Oil Culture, promotes 'a passionate plan to restore olive oil to the pedestal it so rightly deserves'. The Florence-based body charges US$70 (HK$540) a year for membership, and conducts training courses for people in the industry as well as the public.

Hence his presence, as Mico president, at the tasting held in conjunction with the launch of Va Bene restaurant's extra virgin olive oil label. The oil comes from its own olive grove in Loro Ciuffenna in Tuscany and is produced by Grappolini's company.