Morocco Gold Extra Virgin Olive Oil With A Provenance To Be Proud Of

Posted by

Home » News » Morocco Gold Extra Virgin Olive Oil With A Provenance To Be Proud Of

Why the provenance of extra virgin olive oil is so important to achieving the health benefits of olive oil and why Morocco Gold extra virgin olive oil represents the best olive oil available.

Updated 13th March 2023

Morocco Olives Rich In History & Provenance
Morocco Olives Rich In History

SUMMARY:

  • Taking the best olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, is an important part of securing the many health benefits associated with it, such as lowering (bad) cholesterol levels, increasing heart health, reducing inflammation and even protecting against cancer.
  • To get the most out of extra virgin olive oil, provenance is paramount. Extra virgin olive oil is one of the most nutritional and health-beneficial oils available. It contains high levels of monounsaturated fats, a plethora of antioxidant polyphenols that offers protective properties from disease.
  • That’s why it’s essential to ensure that extra virgin olive oil of the highest quality is used for consumption; extra virgin olive oil provenance is paramount in ascertaining its beneficial qualities.
  • The quality of extra virgin olive oil is largely determined by the farming practices and conditions in which the olives were grown, harvested, and processed. Because the best extra virgin olive oil is made from olives that are picked at just the right time, early in the season when the fruit is young, provenance plays an important role in achieving the best quality extra virgin olive oil.
  • Morocco Gold’s strict production guidelines guarantee an extra virgin olive oil of the highest quality with traceability that can be tracked right back to farmers and groves where our oil is sourced. Morocco Gold extra virgin olive oil is renowned for its superb provenance, cultivated manually in the fertile groves of Northern Morocco, using centuries-old traditions.
  • This extra virgin olive oil has been tested to meet all requirements for extra virgin quality and guarantees a pure, natural product, sustainably produced, with an unrivalled taste profile.
  • By relying on Morocco Gold extra virgin olive oil, consumers can rest assured they are receiving some of the best extra virgin olive oil available; allowing them to gain maximum health benefits from its nutritional qualities and enjoy its distinctive flavour profile.
  • That’s why Morocco Gold extra virgin olive oil represents some of the best olive oil in the world. To promote your long-term health, choose Morocco Gold extra virgin olive oil with a provenance to be proud of!

CONTENTS:

Why Provenance Of Extra Virgin Olive Oil Matters

Extra Virgin Olive Oil has been enjoyed for its health benefits, versatility and taste for many centuries and across many cultures and nations.

We are, as a global community, becoming more protective of our own health and wellbeing and increasingly invested in the origins of the food and drink we enjoy at our tables.  

So, how exactly do you know where your olive oil has come from and why should you care?

Historically, the market for production and export of Extra Virgin Olive Oil has been dominated by Mediterranean countries.  In recent years, however, unusual weather and a proliferation of bacterial blight have devastated the harvest in several of the major European olive oil producers, including Spain, Italy and Greece.

This has also led to increasing reports of ‘fake’ or unsatisfactory olive oil – which fails to meet extra virgin quality criteria – coming into the market. 

Morocco Gold is a superior quality, single estate Extra Virgin olive oil from an entirely new source. The oil is made from olives grown in the foothills of the Atlas mountains.

It sets a new standard for authenticity, provenance, and the guarantee of extra virgin quality through our rigorous testing and traceability regimes. We work with certified growers, Morocco Gold is tested locally by ONSSA, (the National Office for the Sanitary Protection of Food Products in Morocco), then re-tested by our EU certified laboratory to guarantee extra virgin quality.

Discover The Health Benefits Of Morocco Gold

How Brexit Is Threatening Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil

This is now being exacerbated as the impacts of Brexit become ever clearer. Imports of Italian olive oil to the UK fell by 13% in the first five months of this year. ‘This is due to the bureaucratic and administrative difficulties linked to the exit of the British from the European Union,’ said the Italian farmers’ lobby group Coldiretti in a statement.  

Coldiretti warned that these difficulties jeopardise a total of the €3.4 billion (£2.9 billion) worth of Italian food exports to the UK. The lobby group also warned that Brexit means non-EU food and drinks that do not comply with EU safety standards could be favoured in the UK over Italian products.  

The group said that the UK could become the ‘trojan horse’ for the arrival of fake Made in Italy products – which are mainly made in the US, they claimed. This could catch out some British consumers who thought they were buying authentic Italian products. ‘The British need to watch out for Italian oil and parmesan with an Italian flag on the label which actually comes from America,’ Mr Bazzana said.  

Extra Virgin Olive Oil From Morocco

Morocco is a country of rich geographical and cultural diversity. It is also a country undergoing major transformation, celebrating its rich heritage, whilst modernising key sectors of its economy. This includes its thriving agricultural sector, a key part of which is olive cultivation and the production of olive oil.

Even though olive cultivation has been part of Morocco’s agricultural scene since the Roman era, and Morocco is the world’s fifth largest producer of olive oil, the quality and unique qualities of Moroccan olive oil have been relatively unknown.

What Makes Moroccan The Best Olive Oil?

Morocco has the ideal climate for olive cultivation – mild winters, and warm, dry summers. The soils in the main olive growing regions near Taounate, Taza, Fez, Meknes, Beni Mellal, and Marrakech are rich and deep, and generally have an equal balance of clay and coarse sands.

The climate is also slightly harsher than in other olive oil producing countries. Morocco Gold  olives are grown in a valley that is about 2,000 feet above sea level. This helps to create the additional climatic challenges that encourage polyphenol uptake within the olive tree. It is also an area with naturally occurring high phenols in the soil itself.

Morocco Gold is a superior quality, single estate Extra Virgin olive oil from an entirely new source. The oil is made from olives grown in the foothills of the Atlas mountains.

It sets a new standard for authenticity, provenance, and the guarantee of extra virgin quality through our rigorous testing and traceability regimes. We work with certified growers, Morocco Gold is tested locally by ONSSA, (the National Office for the Sanitary Protection of Food Products in Morocco), then re-tested by our EU certified laboratory to guarantee extra virgin quality.

What Makes Morocco Gold Extra Virgin Olive Oil So Special?

Thanks to the recent spotlight on the Mediterranean Diet, extensive research has been done on the phytonutrient composition of extra virgin olive oil. What has been discovered is an extensive list of phytonutrients; one of the most praised is its polyphenols. The amount of polyphenols found in Morocco Gold extra virgin olive oil is truly amazing!

What Are Polyphenols?

Polyphenols are a group of over 500 phytochemicals, which are naturally occurring micronutrients in plants. These compounds give a plant its colour and can help to protect it from various dangers. When you eat plants with polyphenols, you reap the health benefits as well.

Polyphenols In Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Polyphenols are a key component in extra virgin olive oil and are considered to be one of the best health enhancing benefits within the oil. Polyphenols are a potent antioxidant – one that can decommission a nasty molecule in your body called free radicals. Free radicals can ricochet around inside your body and harm good cells. Antioxidants, such as the polyphenols found in extra virgin olive oil, work to neutralize free radicals, protecting the body from their harmful effects. It’s also thought that polyphenols contribute to keep the body being in an anti-inflammatory state. This is also associated with a lower risk of several chronic diseases. 

Polyphenols In Morocco Gold Extra Virgin Olive Oil

The high polyphenol content of Morocco Gold extra virgin olive oil is dependent on three factors. First is the variety of the olive, secondly the climate and terroire of the growing region and thirdly the actual time in the growing season that the crop is harvested.

Morocco Gold is pressed from the Picholine Marocaine, the only type of olive to go into Morocco Gold. Oil from this variety is renowned for it’s high polyphenol count, oxidative stability and longevity.

Our olives are grown in a valley that is about 2,000 feet above sea level. This helps to create the additional climatic challenges that encourage polyphenol uptake within the olive tree. It is also an area with naturally occurring high phenols in the soil itself.

In soils, phenols are released over extended period of time from decomposing plant materials. This causes complex organic compounds to be slowly oxidized or to break down into simpler forms of sugars,  amino sugars, aliphatic and phenolic organic acids. These are further transformed into microbial biomass or are reorganized, and further oxidized, into humic assemblages (fulvic and humic acids), which bind to clay minerals.

Olive trees grown in ‘challenging’ conditions encourage the uptake of naturally occurring phenols in the soil. This in turn aids the circulatory system within the olive tree, with the phenols eventually finding their way to the olive fruit itself.

Thirdly, our olives are picked when the fruit is young and green. As the olives age on the tree, the colour of the olive changes to red and then black, the size of the olive increases thus producing more oil, but the polyphenol level decreases. There is a great deal of expertise within the farming community where we source our oil to ensure that the harvest is collected at the optimum time to maximise the polyphenol level.

Types Of Polyphenols & Benefits Of Olive Oil

There are a number of different types of polyphenols in Extra Virgin olive oil, including oleuropein, tyrosol, hydroxytyrosol, oleocanthal and oleacein.  Each are considered extremely strong antioxidants, and are linked to a number of different benefits, including:

Extra Virgin Olive Oil Harvested At The Perfect Moment

Olives Harvested At The Perfect Time.
Olives Harvested At The Perfect Time

Morocco Gold is harvested and pressed early in the season when the fruit is young, with no mixing or blending with other oils across the season to maintain its fresh milled flavour. It is produced from the Picholine olive, characterised by its high concentrations of polyphenols that give its oxidative stability, distinctive fruity taste and health enhancing qualities.

Moroccan Gold olives are grown using only natural, traditional methods. Nothing is added or taken away, so that the result is solely dependent on the soil, the sun, the rain and the time of harvest.

Compared to wine making, extra virgin olive oil production is a simpler and faster process. But unlike wine, olive oil does not improve with age. It is at its best when fresh but will unavoidably change over time. Yet the volatile components that give extra virgin olive oil like Morocco Gold its desirable “green notes”, the flavour and aroma that consumer and tasters desire, will eventually disappear over time.

The Best Olive Oil For Our Customers: Authenticity From Source To Bottle

Superior extra virgin olive oil like Morocco Gold is obtained only when harvest, milling and processing of olives are properly managed. Along those steps, there are two naturally occurring and interrelated processes that must be understood as they impact the olive oil’s quality: lipolysis and oxidation. Lipolysis (a form of hydrolysis) begins on the olive fruit as it ripens, and is caused by enzymes present in the fruit, which are later on removed with the vegetation water. Lipolytic enzymes break down major olive oil components and generate free fatty acids, precursors to olive oil change of condition.

Best Extra Virgin Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Oxidation (more specifically, auto-oxidation) is triggered when the oil enters in contact with oxygen in the air, first during the milling process, and later on during storage in tanks and bottles. Oxidation produces peroxides from some fatty acids. Peroxides are unstable compounds which are further oxidized to yield volatile and non-volatile components that give rise to off-flavours and undesirable aromas in the oil (secondary oxidation). The other form of oxidation, photo oxidation, is usually minor and negligible if the oil is stored in the dark. In brief: lipolysis generates free fatty acids and oxidation causes the formation of peroxides from these fatty acids (primary oxidation), eventually leading to rancidity and degradation of the oil over time (secondary oxidation).

Attaining extra virgin olive oil of superior provenance requires minimizing the generation of free fatty acids by hydrolysis and delaying the onset of oxidation.

Our rear label information also sets a new standard for information about the oil itself, lot / batch / bottle numbering to give absolute re-assurance regarding authenticity, traceability, provenance and the guarantee of Extra Virgin Quality. Uniquely, we include the results of our testing on each and every bottle of Morocco Gold, so our customers can see at a glance the guarantee of extra virgin quality.

When you purchase Morocco Gold extra virgin olive oil, you are guaranteed a wonderful tasting, health enhancing culinary experience.

You will also recognise the quality of Morocco Gold when you first open the bottle and the fresh, floral, fruity aroma permeates the kitchen in a wonderful sensory experience.

With such provenance our olive oil is ‘liquid gold’ in every sense.

Close