We had the privilege of a noon check-out today. We took the opportunity to get some extra sleep in and ready ourselves for a day of mostly sitting. We began that gruelling day by first grabbing brunch at 📍Kaju that just happens to be a couple of doors down from 📍Nau Specialty Coffee. We had a 15:00 olive oil tasting that “forced” us to spend two extra hours in Coimbra and what better way to spend that time than eating delicious food and drinking good coffee (incidentally, we can confirm that we should have skipped the coffee at 📍Kaju)?
We left behind the university town and went to south to 📍Passeite, Azeite da familia Passos for our first-ever olive oil tasting. As I’m pretty sure one cannot get drunk on olive oil, we both were able to partake in the experience as opposed to wine tasting that would have had only the passenger enjoy the experience. The place that Karine found is small, family-owned, and only takes tastings once a day and it is a small affair. That turned out great for us as we were the only guests that day. We walked a little bit in the field while chatting about how the farm came to be but, more interestingly, how farming olives works and what led the family to choose the varieties of olives they’re cultivating. As it turns out, it started mostly as a retirement hobby that got too big to be a pure hobby but too small to be a business. The family pitched in and turned it into an actual business with groves spread throughout the north of Portugal.
After our visit of the grove, we were then sat down and went through a chat of what makes the different grades of olive oil; how processing works and how grading of the olive oil works. It did clear up some misconceptions that “extra virgin” meant the first pressing and “virgin” meant a second pressing. It actually has all to do with the ripeness of the olive. Were they harvested and processed before some fermentation of the fruit started happening. Harvesting olives is done through mechanical shaking of the tree. You then have a short period of time to get it pressed to extract the oil. Yields are surprisingly low. We’re talking around 10% by weight (10kg of olives will yield 1kg of oil which is less than a litre). Samples of the resulting product is sent to labs for assessment that includes a number of chemical test but also some purely human tasting for the flavour profile. If the producer did all things right they get top grades and they have extra virgin olive oil. If something was amiss, they end up virgin olive oil. The leftover pulp can be further processed to create lower grade oil. That’s where tasteless or cooking olive oil usually comes from.
The tasting experience was interesting. The flavour profile of different olive oils is more different that we expected. Of course olive oil tastes like olives. A bit like coffee, you have to go for the notes that you feel around the main profile. Our host wanted us to try and describe before she gave us a hint at what we should be tasting. While it’s clear the intent is to get us engaged, I got me engaged in imagining what descriptor would work more than discerning any specific profile. Specially on the first of four olive tastings. By the last one I was ready to engage in a little self-deception and try to imagine I was tasting other things than olives. Not having a very good imagination, I didn’t stray far from the keywords that were already shared with us. As neophytes to the art of tasting olive oil that is not surprising. Nonetheless it was easy enough to perceive the difference in intensity of the different oils and which one we would prefer cooking with. A good eye opener overall but not an experience we felt would bear repeating. What was also interesting is tasting the oil alone (no bread to soak it), then by dipping figs and tomatoes in it.
With the oily adventure over, we jumped back in the car and drove south to Évora. The three-hour drive was uneventful. We listened to an audiobook and enjoyed the scenery. We parked the car next to the city wall and made the very short 300 meters trek to our apartment. We unpacked, and headed out to the 📍Miradouro do Jardim Diana to look at the sunset. The short walk gave us a feeling that Évora might be emptier than our research suggested. The streets were empty, most shops closed and crossing 2/3 of the walled portion of the city took seven minutes. Our experience travelling tells us not to make a judgement on a city when arriving at the end of the day. Genoa thought us that back in 2008. We arrived on the ferry from Corsica late at night, had an offline map on our phone and walked through the port at random and then along a boulevard with small dark alleys branching off it. It was dirty with barely a person on the street. It didn’t seem safe and it was hard to figure out where to go. Our first impression was far from good. The next morning, other than being taken aback by what was our first Italian breakfast ever (a croissant filled with too sweet jam) we walked the city and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It was our first contact with Italy back then and we repeated the experience 6 more times since. Like back then, we held our judgement, arrived at the park, enjoyed the sunset and went for dinner.
📍Restaurante Lombardo is a small affair. Part of the reason we picked them was they were opened on Monday. Lots of places are closed on Monday around here. While the choice was born out of scheduling, the resulting experience was great. Tomorrow we’ll be exploring the city.