Escape to the Mediterranean

That's what I did last week!

Liquid Gold is a lovely wee olive oil/balsamic vinegar tasting bar found in the Hydrostone Market on Young street. Yes, a tasting bar! For those reading from"away" they have online ordering for some varieties.

The oils and vinegars here are top quality and are kept in metal containers called 'fusti". They are grouped in flavours from very mild to strong. One starts with the softer ones and works up to the more robust flavours using small spoons or tiny cubes of bread to sample them. You can even mix the various oils and vinegars in tiny cups to make dressings.

The oils come from all over the Mediterranean. Spain, Greece, Italy, France...and the vinegars hail from Modena in Italy. The oils are pure, single fruits called cultivars or are cultivars that have been flavoured with yummy partners. In spring/summer, the oils come from the southern hemisphere where the winter crop is harvested between May and July. In the fall & winter, they come from the Mediterranean. I was in heaven!
Myrna Burlock opened the business with Bill MacArthur in September and business is booming. We had a lot of fun with her as she helped us choose what to buy.

Each oil has a card describing where it came from and the flavour profile (very much like a wine) as well as the IOCC standard for it.
IOOC Standards. FFA: Measure of free acidity that indicates decomposition. EVOO must be less than 0.8 OLEIC ACID: A monosaturated Omega-9 fatty acid. It makes up 55-83% of EVOO. PV: Peroxide value. A measure ofrancidity due to oxidization. Must be less than 20,less than 10 for high quality extra virgin olive oil.

People were popping in and out during our visit and Myrna told a story of a husband who brought his foodie wife here for her birthday. He brought a bottle of wine which they opened and a lovely afternoon was spent here sampling all the combinations of flavours. I mean...look at them and those are just some of the oils!

I adored the balsamic vinegars. One of my all time faves was the chocolate balsamic! Really! Remember I said you could mix? I tried blood orange olive oil with the chocolate balsamic, amazing! The vinegars almost taste like liqueurs. There were organic varieties to choose from too.

So what did I choose? It was difficult but I figured it out.

I went for the Koroneiki , a strong green olive oil from Greece

It was one of the robust flavours near the end of the line.

The balsamic vinegar I chose was the Pomegranate balsamic. It was SO hard to choose. I wanted to take them all home. I guess that's why they are doing well:)

So the exciting part of this post is that a local reader or anyone that can physically make it to the store is going to get a bottle each of vinegar and olive oil. Just leave a comment here (before midnight on Sunday, Jan16) and if you are interested, you can follow Liquid Gold on facebook. Oh and if you are lucky, you might get to meet Riley, the resident napper.