La Tourangelle Avocado Oil

La Tourangelle Avocado Oil
250 ml - California

100% pure, all-natural and handcrafted from fresh premium avocados. This gorgeous emerald green oil has a fine fruity roundness that makes it perfect for both sweet and savory applications. On salads it adds a hint of avocado flavor, and it's wonderful drizzled over slices of grapefruit and melon.

Avocado oil can be used the same way you use your extra virgin olive oil. But, because it has a higher smoke point than olive oil, this avocado oil for cooking can be used in even more applications: stir-frying, frying, sautéing, baking, dipping, blending into a dressing/sauce, or drizzling over a finished dish.

Health benefits
While delicious for cooking, avocado oil, like olive oil and hazelnut oil, is high in oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat that may help to lower cholesterol.

Production process
La Tourangelle Avocado Oil is processed on equipment very similar to those used to process extra virgin olive oil. Local California avocado pulp is first ex-speller pressed using a centrifuge. It is then lightly filtered and “polished” using another centrifuge. The result is a beautiful, emerald green oil with high level of monounsaturated fats that will bring a delicious, light avocado flavor to whatever you add it to.

About the Producer
Abraham Lincoln had yet to be elected president when Mr. Morillon and Mr. Bechet founded a small animal-powered oil mill in the idyllic French town of Saumur. Over the next century and a half, La Tourangelle refined their production processes and adopted appropriate technologies without ever compromising the artisan tradition.

The production of gourmet oils is a time-honored tradition in France. Originally, each village had a mill which roasted and extracted the oil from nuts gathered by local farmers. These flavorful oils were used in hearty rustic fare but could also be found in the finest Parisian restaurants. La Tourangelle is one of just a handful of these remaining mills that keep this tradition alive.

Demand for gourmet oils in France has remained fairly constant but pressures to modernize distribution channels and a growing demand for quality nut oils in the US sent 24 years old Matthieu Kohlmeyer to California's Bay Area to recreate his family's French artisan oil mill. He now mills locally gorwn nuts and seeds closer to both the source and the customers. The process involved custom fabricating century-old equipment and bringing an oil roasting artisan from France to train the American staff.

The new oil mill, located in Woodland, California, is currently producing oil from nuts picked on the orchard next door. The oil artisans painstakingly selects nuts of the highest quality and lets them sun dry to preserve their natural flavors. They then hand roast the nuts in cast iron pots, followed by a decantation process, cold-pressing and finally a light filtering. The result is an oil with elegant natural flavors, and a clearly discernible difference in quality from what is generally found in America.