As part of a campaign by DDFH&B to promote Supervalu's own brand products and suppliers, we were briefed by art director Conor Swanton to photograph three suppliers here in Ireland and in Cordoba, Spain.
We photographed Margaret Farrelly from Clonarn Clover, Ken Ecock from Oceanpath in Howth and Thomas Hengy from Med International.
As you can see in the video, Cordoba is a beautiful place and Thomas and his business partner Jean Bernard were excellent hosts and helped us find the best place to shoot among hundreds of acres of olive groves. When we had our shot and the sun had finally gone we were invited to an olive oil tasting which was incredible. Apart from the variety of olives, I had never imagined the number of factors that effect the final product in the bottle. The olives Thomas and Jean Bernard use at Me International are pressed, filtered and stored in air tight vats within 5 hours of harvesting which is very important if you want to get great flavour from the olives and insure a beautiful extra virgin oil, which they certainly do.
Their top tips for preserving your olive oil in good condition are as follows.
- Air is the enemy of olive oil so treat yours like wine, keep air out & store away from bright light.
- Colour has no relation to the flavour flavour.
- Try to use olive oil without heating. It's great in the pan but when it smokes it's destroyed.
I am so grateful to all the suppliers we photographed for their enthusiasm (food producers always are enthusiastic and so passionate about what they do!) and also their generosity in allowing us to use up so much of their time.