The Olive Oil and Wine Connection: Rimessa Roscioli - Rome, Italy Pt. 6

Forrest Kelly: 00:00:00

Welcome. Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast with Forrest Kelly.

Did you know, when Olive oil met wine at a party, they discovered they both make everything taste better. And we know how wine loves olive oil, always bringing out its best qualities. Let's talk olive oil.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:00:21

I mean, olive oil should be made from olives, for starters. Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff in Italy isn't even because the mafia has gotten their hands, hands into that world as well.

Forrest Kelly: 00:00:33

What?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:00:33

And so often olive oils that get exported are made from soybean oils. And put a little bit of chlorophyll in there to give them that nice green color that makes them look a little more sincere, and off you go. So, ugh.

You know, in terms of what you look for, it's tough because even the ones that say made in Italy aren't always made in Italy. But we, I don't know, at Rimasa Richole, we have all the small artisans that, again, that's just the way we work with.

We go meet them all in person before we ever. We never let someone just send a sample and say, okay, that was good, we'll take it. We go meet people.

Richole has always, always done an extreme amount of research on the products and the producers and the land where things are coming from. We go and see these places. We don't just. You can tell this because we do videos.

We have probably 600 videos of winemakers and cheese makers and olive oil producers on our YouTube channel. It's a labor of love, but it's a lot of work. But it's the only way to really understand exactly what you're getting.

So, unfortunately, if you're just the average consumer, there's not a specific thing I could tell you to look for.

Forrest Kelly: 00:01:32

Yeah. So you're putting the pressure on these people to and actually say what they are. So when you're fact checking, as you will.

But I've never interviewed a winery or anything to do with wine that had a tasting of extra virgin olive oil. There's different tastings. Obviously, it's not the same taste for every olive oil, right?

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:01:50

Oh, gosh, no, that's for sure. There's something like 600 different olive cultivars from north to south, and they vary.

Usually the ones that come from the north are going to be a little bit on the lighter side. The Tajasca olive is a little bit lighter that you find from Liguria. Then you get into, I don't know, Lazio Tuscan.

I don't really love the tuscan olive oils personally, as much as I do some of the Lazio ones. There's canino that I really enjoy. Those are maybe a little bit more on the kind of middle bitterness, middle spiciness.

And then you get down to Puglia and Sicily and you can start to end up having some pretty spicy, powerful, rich olive oils that maybe you wouldn't use on a salad, but you'd use more for grilling and cooking. And they just bring out the maximum flavor in everything you're cooking. The good stuff should almost make you cough.

And that's kind of scary for some people because they say, why? Why would I want to cough if it's good? But that's when it's got all the polyphenols and all the good juju in there that makes it healthy for you.

Forrest Kelly: 00:02:44

So I see where we can shop so that everything that everybody experiences kind of there, they kind of, if they want to take it home, they can go into like a grocery store.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:02:53

We basically, I mean, more or less anything you taste, you can almost bring home with you. Everything's more or less available for takeaway, for shipping. We can ship wines and foods as well.

There are some restrictions based on the countries of what can be shipped in terms of that, but we have online websites, so shop RimessaRoscioli.com. we also have shop roscioliwineclub.com/#start.com. and a lot of our products are now going to be even based in New York.

So that wines don't have to ship from Italy, they'll also ship from New York for the us customers.

And that'll allow them to receive the wines in a matter of two, three days and, or depending on where in the country, up to a week, maybe, depending on where they are, instead of three to four weeks, which is the traditional shipping time for internationally, for wine.

Forrest Kelly: 00:03:37

Because Ramessa Ruscioli does everything top notch. Can't wait to hear about the wine club. Tell me about that.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:03:44

Yeah, so we have four different levels currently.

Probably they will end up becoming three because the legends level is, we just can't accept new members because the wines are so allocated at that level. But we basically have one that would be about 800 per year as what we call the essential or level one wine club.

would be around a little over: 1000

Based on the price point, you'll get different levels of wines.

Like, for example, a roastedi Montalcino would go in the level one, where a Brunello di Montelcino would probably go in the level two and more of one. That's maybe a vintage or, you know, slightly older Brunello could go in the level, the collector's level, the level three.

But you're gonna get wines from all over Italy, from, generally speaking, like I said, really small producers. We try to mix up the varietals. We almost always include a barolo in the level two and a brunello.

We want to give a nice array of wines so that people are introduced to things that they're not familiar with. And all the wines in general, we want to be, that are not accessible.

Forrest Kelly: 00:04:46

In the US, in the box, they're getting not only the wine, obviously, but to mention the QR code, the story behind it.

Lindsay Gabbard: 00:04:53

The wine club is really meant to be a complete experience with wine.

It's not just to be, you know, where you get your twelve bottles of wine, you open it up, you maybe have a brochure that you flip through it, throw it in the garbage, which is what most people. I mean, I was part of wine club, so I know how people use them.

We wanted to really bring you as close as you could be to actually being on the vineyards with us.

Because for us, that's where the magic happens, is walking on these vineyards with the producers, listening to them tell their story, what they're passionate about, where their family maybe came from, what got them into wine. We want you to hear it from.

From their side of the story, and to really immerse yourself in the experience and not just have it be about consuming wine.

We want people to drink with care, is kind of the phrase we use, which is understanding, because people also appreciate what they're drinking so much more when they know the story behind it.

Forrest Kelly: 00:05:38

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