Extra Virginity

The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil

By: Tom Mueller

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Hardcover | 5 December 2011

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Extra Virginity is a rich, fluid and evocative account of the history and alchemy of olive oil, and of how the finest artisanal oil-manufacturers - in the deep south of Italy, around Australia, the Mediterranean, in California and beyond - are endangered by the widespread fraud of one of mankind's oldest and most versatile products. The best oils are made by authentic artist-craftsmen, who marry centuries-old agricultural wisdom with cutting-edge extraction technology, and now produce the finest oils in history. 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.

About The Author

Tom Mueller lives in Liguria, Italy, with his wife and three children. Educated at Oxford and Harvard, he is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, and also writes for National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic Monthly.

Industry Reviews

"Starred review. Engrossing history, vivid contemporary reporting and a cogent call to action, expertly blended in an illuminating text." -- Kirkus Reviews "The New Yorker writer does for his subject what Susan Orlean did for orchids." -- Columbus Dispatch "... [Extra-Virginity] does for olive oil what Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation did for hamburgers. Mueller traces the history of this valuable product from antiquity to the present, but the really disturbing part is his expose of the inferior quality control and outright fraud among today's' oil producers." -- Hollywood Reporter "How long have readers been waiting for a book like this? A century? A millennium? Finally, the earth's most poetic food has found its storyteller. Essential, smart, and ridiculously overdue." -- Bill Buford, author of Heat

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