NUDO: I'm often asked 'what is so bad about importing oil from Spain to Italy and calling it “Italian”? Aren’t Spanish olives as good as Italian ones?' What would you say to this question? Honest producers are victims of unfair competition. So 2 completely different products, one valuable and the other low-quality, are being sold under the identical label. But many poor oils are sold under the extra virgin label.

It’s very expensive to produce true extra virgin olive oil, cheap to make poor oil. TOM: It’s not so much a matter of scale as of quality. NUDO: Why is it hard for small scale olive oil producers to make a living? It’s safe to say that most extra virgin olive oils sold at $10 per litre are wrongly labeled, and some are downright frauds. TOM: Again, it depends on the source, though it’s expensive to ship olive oil to the US, and the retailer must have a mark-up. NUDO: In American supermarkets, it is possible to buy ‘100% Italian, extra virgin olive oil, first cold press’ for under $10 per litre. The current absurd situation of 'extra virgin' olive oil costing €1.70 in the bulk market in Jaén is an open joke, yet no official agency seems willing to intervene. What really shocked me were the multinational companies who knowingly deal with the criminals, and the governments who wink at fraud without acting against it, lest they interfere with free (and corrupt) trade. TOM: Not the criminals – they were merely the foot soldiers of a much bigger and uglier picture. NUDO: What most shocked you in your investigation of the olive oil industry? We caught up with Tom to ask him some more about his book and whether he can offer practical advice to consumers about how to avoid being fooled. It describes how skilled oil fraudsters are flooding the market with, cheap, fake extra virgin oils, reaping profits and undercutting honest producers - whilst the authorities in Italy, the US and elsewhere turn a blind eye. He travels the world exposing the widespread fraud in the industry and discovering how it threatens artisan olive oil producers like Nudo. It’s a shocking book!

I’ve spoken myself to Ligurian olive growers who openly admit to selling their olives to such companies, to be blended with imported oil, but still sold as ‘Ligurian’. Liguria is home to some large, powerful olive oil producers who are often accused of mislabelling ‘normal olive oil’ as ‘extra virgin olive oil’, or imported olive oil as ‘Italian’. At his home in Liguria, these two passions came together for his book on olive oil.

The only thing he loves more than tasting delicious food is sniffing out a great story. Tom Mueller is an investigative journalist.

Extra virginity by tom mueller