English Olive Oil

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 4 July 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With the price of olive oil soaring in the shops after drought disrupted production in Spain, Leyla Kazim looks into the English farms planting olive groves in the hope of bottling their own oil. She meets a farmer in Essex who explains that English growing conditions are more suitable than you might think and discovers a producer in Cornwall who has already started pressing his own extra virgin olive oil. So will olive oil from Essex or Cornwall become the new English sparkling wine?

Dan Saladino reports from Sicily where hotter conditions due to climate change are presenting new challenges for growers. Food historian Dr Annie Gray debunks some of the myths around olive oil consumption in England and Leyla learns the correct way to approach an oil-tasting from one of the country’s biggest suppliers.

Produced by Robin Markwell for BBC Audio in Bristol.

Transcript

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1:01.0	So the first part of the tasting is done with the nose. So what you do is you try and coat this little glass. What you try to increase the surface area. Because it's an oil, it doesn't
1:06.1	naturally evaporate. I'm in an office block on the outskirts of London doing something I have never done before.
1:13.8	And then, if you're brave, then you take a good sniff.
1:18.1	I am taste testing olive oil.
1:21.0	And if you're brave, you're going to tell me what you smell.
1:23.0	Smell olive oil.
1:27.1	My guide is the managing director of Britain's biggest olive oil brand
	...

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