Entering the supermarket on one of my rare visits I encountered this:
Not sure if you can make it out on the picture but oh dear, five litres of olive oil for €12.50. That is only €2.50 a litre!
As you might remember some days ago we proudly announced the birth of our own olive oil. We picked the olives on ‘our’ hill in two days. We have about 40 trees, well actually they are not ours we are merely looking after them. They are a bit like our bambini. This winter we spent weeks pruning them. Yes they were in need of a good haircut. Another thing they like is having their roots and base nicely manicured, so now and then we get out our descespugliatore (strimmer) and oblige. All in all a lot of work for 55 litres of oil from 40 big and (some very) small trees.
So let’s do the maths. Buying the same 55 litres, according to this supermarket special, will set you back €137.50. Pressing alone costed us €80! So there will be €60 left for wages. Wages are low here, but €60 is way less than what it will cost you to keep the trees happy even in rural Italy.
Of course our oil is better than the one from the supermarket beside the fact ours is hyperorganic. On the label of the supermarket bottles it didn’t say where the olives came from or how the olives were picked… it just says Olio Novello Extra Vergine di Oliva.
But did I mention how lovely the olive trees look on this hill? They can’t bottle that for any money in the world.
0 Comments