The Oil With a Season
The first time I tasted new oil, properly new oil, straight from the press in the back of a stone building in November, I disgraced myself by coughing. Everyone else around the little table had taken their torn piece of bread, dragged it through the small pool of oil that had been poured out — thick, cloudy, a startling fierce green, almost luminous — and eaten it with slow, knowing nods, the way people nod at something they have been waiting all year for. I did the same, with what I hoped looked like Mediterranean savoir-faire, and about two seconds after I swallowed, the back of my throat caught fire and I coughed like a man who had inhaled his lunch. The oil had a peppery kick at the finish so sharp, so aggressive, that it genuinely rasped — a hot, bitter, prickling catch right at the back of the throat that no oil I had ever bought in a bottle had come close to. I was mortified. The old man who had pressed it looked delighted. " Buono, eh? " he said. "You cough. Is g...
