Cailletier Olives from the Alziari Family in Nice
My favorite olives from the South of France
Back in the 1980s, in the early years of doing business at the Deli, extra virgin olive oil was still pretty much a secret in the U.S., barely understood even by folks who were working with food for a living. When we opened, we stocked two brands of it, and they were hardly big sellers. That was then, this is now. Today, of course, extra virgin olive oil is an enormous element of what we eat, cook, sell, and enjoy every day!
Somewhere in the mid-’80s, I traveled to Provence, in the south of France. There I discovered that olive oil is literally the culinary lingua franca—it’s impossible to imagine good food in the region without it. As part of the trip, we traveled down to Nice on the Côte d’Azur. Inspired by Patricia Wells’ classic The Food Lover’s Guide to France, we went to find the amazing artisan shop of Alziari. I fell quickly in love. I’m a huge fan of small food shops with big personalities and high-quality products, the kinds of places that don’t succumb to social pressure to franchise or replicate themselves into creative oblivion. The personality of the place was indeed big, the history was evident and everywhere, the tin was (and is) a classic of early-20th-century commercial design (“olives and leaves painted on a background of rich gold stars and against the deep blue of a Provence sky,” according to reporter Mort Rosenblum), and the oil was very, very good! And, I’m happy to say, it still is.
The Alziari family has been in the olive oil business since 1868, three years after the end of the American Civil War. The business was started by Cesar Martin, who was the son of laundry workers. Around the turn of the century, he opened a shop near the family mill, and then, in the 1930s (around the time Emma Goldman came to live nearby), the family set up a second retail space near Nice’s famous flower market. (Given her affinity for fine food and fresh flowers both it’s not hard to imagine Emma stopping by to shop.) In August of 1982, during the summer the Deli opened, Patricia Wells wrote in The New York Times: “When one talks of oil, one talks of Alziari. Ludovic Alziari is now 72, and since 1878 his family has been pressing what connoisseurs consider the best olive oil in France.” Ludovic passed away in 1996. Mort Rosenblum quoted one colleague as saying, “He was the pope of olive oil, and [Alziari] is the mother church.”
It was only when I met Mort Rosenblum, then an International Herald Tribune editor and writer whose book Olives: The Life and Lore of a Noble Fruit had just come out, that we were able to get Alziari olive oil sent to Ann Arbor. Mort today spends much of his time writing his insightful Mort Report about the state of American politics and world affairs. In recent years, we’ve begun to order additional products from Alziari. These Cailletier Olives, which we’re stocking at Mail Order, are as special as everything else Alziari sends us. They have the Denomination of Origin certification to show that they are, indeed, authentically from the region.
The olives are typically tiny—the size of, say, the nail on your little finger. Naturally cured in salt brine over many months, they’re delicious right out of the jar. Personally, I prefer to dress them with a little extra virgin olive oil and some chopped herbs. A piece of orange peel is a lovely addition as well! And, perhaps most prominently, these are the olives that belong in a properly made Salade Niçoise. Great flavor, great regional history, great family tradition!
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