Mount Pleasant Magazine Nov/Dec 2017

www.LowcountryCuisineMag.com | www.MountPleasantRestaurant.com | www.CharlestonRecipes.com lowcountry cuisine LC W hile the current culinary atmosphere emphasizes buying local, it can be difficult for conscientious consumers to obtain certain products that are locally produced. Olive oil is among them. Although the Lowcountry has a history of growing olives, there are no current olive growers of any size in the area. That was not always the case. In “Cornbread Nation: The Best of Southern Food Writing #6,” University of South Carolina professor and food historian David Shields pointed out that Charleston’s connection to olives dates back to the 1670s, when olive trees were planted along the Ashley and Cooper rivers but were not harvested for oil. Over the next two centuries, there were various attempts to establish an olive industry in the Lowcountry, but with limited success. A decade before he was elected the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson tried to recreate the olive groves and oil production he witnessed in Italy, shipping around 500 olive trees to Charleston in 1791. Unfortunately, he never realized his vision, lamenting: “If any of them still exist, it is merely as a curiosity in their gardens; not a single orchard of them has been planted.” Fortunately, past disappointments do not mean that locavore olive oil fans are out of luck trying to source quality oil with local connections, though BY ROBERT DONOVAN A Pressing Matter Finding GoodOlive Oil in Charleston