`What Makes a 'DOP' Olive Oil Different? - Olive Oil Times
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What Makes a 'DOP' Olive Oil Different?

By Olivarama
Jun. 1, 2013 14:21 UTC

What Makes a ‘DOP’ Olive Oil Different?

The Council and Parliament Regulation (EC) No 1151/2012 defines Designations of Origin as a name that iden­ti­fies a prod­uct that orig­i­nates in a spe­cific place, a region or, excep­tion­ally, a coun­try; the qual­ity or char­ac­ter­is­tics of which are fun­da­men­tally or exclu­sively due to a par­tic­u­lar geo­graphic set­ting, with the nat­ural and human fac­tors inher­ent to it, and which pro­duc­tion phases take place entirely in a defined geo­graphic area.”

Apart from meet­ing these require­ments, the oils pro­duced under a des­ig­na­tion of ori­gin must offer a cer­tain pres­tige in the mar­ket and meet the rig­or­ous spec­i­fi­ca­tions estab­lished by the Regulatory Board in its Terms and Conditions. Among other aspects, this doc­u­ment deter­mines the pro­tected geo­graphic area, the olive vari­etal or vari­etals accepted and the pro­ce­dures to fol­low dur­ing the elab­o­ra­tion process.

In real­ity, these oils rep­re­sent the thor­ough selec­tion that suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions of farm­ers have made from the olive trees that best adapt to their geo­graphic con­text and which pro­duce the best oils.

We should not for­get the fact that, apart from fit­ting with the offi­cial def­i­n­i­tion, the oils pro­duced under the des­ig­na­tions of ori­gin must be cer­ti­fied in accor­dance with the inter­na­tional stan­dards, which unequiv­o­cally guar­an­tee their ori­gin, qual­ity and the pecu­liar­i­ties that dif­fer­en­ti­ate them from the rest.


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