French Olive Oil

French olive oil is scarce by definition. The country produces a few thousand tonnes in a good year, against millions in Spain, and virtually all of it is drunk at home. What reaches export markets is the surplus of a handful of appellations.

The Vallée des Baux-de-Provence PDO is the best known abroad, built on Salonenque, Aglandau, Grossane and Verdale, with rules governing cultivar proportion, yield and milling window. Nyons PDO, built on the Tanche olive, is the other reference: black-picked, low-bitterness, almost cocoa-scented, and utterly unlike anything from Puglia.

The house style, broadly, is elegance over power: hay, hazelnut, artichoke heart, aniseed, with restrained pepper. These are finishing oils for delicate cooking — shellfish, spring vegetables, fresh goat cheese, citrus.

France also preserves the olive à l'ancienne tradition, in which fruit is stored briefly before milling to develop fermentative aromas. It is a defect by modern panel rules and a delicacy by local custom; we list it only where it is declared honestly.