Disclaimer: I know very little about olive oil, neither can I judge its taste.
As I understand it, the more chlorophyll in the oil, the browner it will look. The cheapest oils are bleached and will show more red.
Our oil is Zeta Olio Extra Vergine di Oliva Originale, purchased in Sweden. I attached the invoice for the oli for our upcoming batch, made with 0.5 liter bottles instead of the 0.75 liter bottles we used for our first batch. If anyone doubts that oil, I can upload the invoices to those as well. That invoice translates to 12 dollars/liter. The oil was on sale but we were unaffected by that - we simply took it because it reached the red color soonest. And indeed it is the most expensive oil for sale.
The Zeta company is owned by Fernando di Luca and he is Italian but has been living in Sweden since the sixties, as a youth.
There is also an Israeli Zeta brand that sells olive oil, but it is not the same. The site for our source is www.zeta.nu
Our oil can contain 900 mg/liter because that is the published maximum in the available literature, obviously Hebbeh is not familiar with it. Perhaps his idea that our oil tastes off is that he disbelieves that figure? The reason why we can attain the maximum is because we don't use magnetical stirrers, we use overhead stirrers. Those stirr extremely much better than a teflon coated magnet.
We are a million-dollar/year company so there is no need for us to economize during the development stages of this product, especially not in this crucial early stage, especially not when the early adopters have ready access to laboratories. It would be suicidal to screw up now, just when we need positive, not negative exposure.
It is for that reason that we decided to discard our entire first batch, because we discovered that, using a different oil (the Zeta), we attained the characteristic ruby red color much faster, and it was much deeper. I can scan and upload our entire purchase history, we have many receipts. Shall I do that? Shall I also upload photos of the labels or a photo of the dozens of empty bottles?
We made an expensive mistake because we had added more C60 (5 g/liter) to the oil, inexperienced as we were, hoping to see the ruby red color faster, We tossed everything, 12 litres with approx. 45 grams of C60. So that cost us 2000 dollars and two weeks. As I said, because we were near-paranoid in getting everything right, because we were certain that qualified folks would be critically analyzing the oil and we are in this for the long haul, not out to get a quick buck with an early release.
We have done some experiments with heating the oil, but only during our first batch, with product we used for experimentation only. We used eight magnetic stirrers on our first batch. They are heated stirrers but we discovered that they are not 100% safe running unattended so we opened them all and we severed the heating element permanently (damaging it). So our stirrers are physically unable to heat up our oil since we started to produce our first sold batch. I don't know how credible it would be as evidence, but we can make a picture of this too. We are only using the magnetic stirrers for experimentation, not for production. *** Please note that when I speak of "first batch", I speak of product that has been discarded, not sold. ***
As to the taste: I remember that the first time I took our oil stright from the dropper into my mouth, that it was burning in my throat. I worried a little about that, thinking that was a sign of bad oil. I later assumed it must be the C60 that burns. However, I now understand that this burning is a sign of good quality oil. The oil stopped burrning now, but it is from the same bottle. Perhaps my throat got used to it.
We are extremely comitted to use the very best oil. I have purchased the book "Extra Virginity - The sublime and scandalous world of olive oil" and I can also upload a picture of that book, with a bottle of our C60 product. Would we buy that book if we were using inferior, heated oil?
Also, we can upload photos of our centrifuges (we have two), filtering columns (we have three), overhead stirrers (we have eight), anything else to show that we are a serious company. Just ask what you would like to see. We even bought expensive 3-liter brown glass bottles to stirr the oil in, in addition to stirring in the dark.
As to the color: We see a beautiful ruby red but it turns out very hard to photograph. We put a halogen lamp behind the bottle (photo published on our site) but the photo becomes very over-exposed so the color looks brownish when we increase the intensity. Mind you, we did that photo with raw material, not filtered or centrifuged, after a week of mixing, containing particles still.
The problem is that the solution is very dark. You see the ruby red when you slush the liquid around. I don't know why Carbon's oil is redder than ours, it could be he used better oil, it could be his oil is lighter (ours is dark, it is an "Classico Originale" oil.)
We read on another thread on this forum that some self-mixers' solutions turned brown. I don't know how significant that is.
Finally: We decided we want to get to the bottom of the allegations of rancid oil, so we are doing the following:
- On Monday, we're sending some centrifuge tubes with oil to Exova labs, to see whether the oil is rancid or contains anything that shouldn't be there.
- We will try to contact olive oil expert Tom Mueller, ans we will ask him who can test our oil for "extra virginity", as we think an analytical lab is less qualified.
- We already emailed Zeta's HQ and told them we are analyzing their oil and we already threatened to sue them for damages if it turns out their oil is bad. Since we don't advertize, we will not survive as a business without positive word-of-mouth. That is our business model. Just out of sheer horror at the prospect of Zeta perhaps selling bad oil, I warned them that the results of our tests better be good - or else. I can't find negative reviews of their oil, or allegations they sell cut oil. I love their Feta cheese, I am very sure it's made of real goat cheese and not cut with cows' milk. We origianlly thought Zeta is a Greek product, since their Feta cheese is popular in Greece and claims to be an original Greek product.
If it turns out we sold rancid oil, god forbid, we will be compensating all our customers of course. We will do that proactively, emailing them ifthat may turn out to be necessary. We will be publishing the results of the various tests on our site, because if they are good, it means we prove the quality, if they are bad, we prove that it was not our fault (e.g. that we did not heat the oil, as has been suggested) and that we are honest and committed to quality.
We are about to start the next batch and we'll be shopping for an even better oil. However, someone in this thread was adamant that our oil was perfectly OK, and he said he knew what he was talking about. So it remains to be seen whether anything is wrong with it. Only the tests we are comissioning will bring clarity.
I am taking the product myself (1.5 ml/day for the past ten days) and it is very hard to say what its effects are, since I am chronically ill with neurological problems and inflammation etc. However I noticed two things that seem to be really new:
1. I am much more relaxed somehow.
2. I was able to walk up a hill on a road near our house without getting so much out of breath as I used to.
All this should be taken with a boulder of salt. It's purely subjective and it may very well have nothing to do with the C60. I am still on medications and they make me feel good on some days and much worse on others. But I will keep taking C60 in olive oil. And when we have more available, I will take higher doses.
Edited by SarahVaughter, 01 July 2012 - 03:19 PM.
I hope so.
