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Alessi olive oil pourer with tasting glass
Alessi Fior d’olio set with elegant stainless-steel olive oil pourer and separate dark tasting glass. PLEASE NOTE: two separate pieces; the pourer does not fit onto the glass. The glass hides the oil’s colour and can be warmed by hand. Read more
Looking at the product photo, it would be very easy to think that the glass is some kind of little bottle onto which the stainless-steel pourer is fitted. It is not.
These are genuinely two completely separate items. The pourer goes onto your own bottle of olive oil. The dark glass is used separately for tasting olive oil. Alessi even includes an extra image in the packaging to make that clear. Which makes the product photo suggesting almost the opposite especially convenient :-)
An elegant pourer in mirror-polished 18/10 stainless steel and thermoplastic resin. Place it onto a suitable bottle of olive oil and even an ordinary bottle immediately takes on a very different presence at the table.
The separate tasting glass is dark so that the colour of the oil does not influence your judgement. Hold it in your hand so the oil can warm slightly and its aromas become easier to discover.
This is exactly what Alessi does so well. A simple problem – how do I pour oil neatly from a bottle? – is not solved with an anonymous plastic spout, but with an object you actually want to see.
The mirror-polished stainless steel, curved spout and elegant leaf motif immediately give an olive oil bottle more presence. Beautiful at home on a well-laid table, but equally suitable for hospitality and fine dining.
Anyone tasting olive oil seriously tries not to be influenced by colour. A vivid green oil is not automatically better than a golden-yellow one. That is why the glass is dark: you barely see the colour and are encouraged to rely mainly on your nose and palate.
The glass sits comfortably in the hand. Hold it for a while and your body heat gently warms the oil. Then smell the oil carefully before taking a small sip to discover fruitiness, bitterness, pungency and aroma.
You only need a small amount of oil to assess aroma, flavour and mouthfeel properly.
Hold the glass in your hand so your body heat gently warms the oil and helps release its aromas.
Smell first, then taste. Because you can barely see the colour, the aroma and flavour profile receives all the attention.
Fior d'olio was designed by Italian architect and designer Marta Sansoni. Her work for Alessi shows exactly what the brand is known for: everyday objects are given a distinctive, often organic form without losing their function.
With this pourer, the reference to the olive and its leaf is almost self-evident. It is not decoration added afterwards, but a design in which the subject – olive oil – becomes part of the object itself.
That has essentially been the charm of Alessi for more than a century. From a metalworking workshop in Omegna, the Italian family company grew into an international design house collaborating with world-famous architects and designers.
Kettles, citrus squeezers, corkscrews, table accessories – at Alessi almost any everyday object can become the starting point for exceptional design. Fior d'olio fits perfectly into that tradition.
The pourer turns a bottle into a more elegant table object. The tasting glass does something completely different: it invites you to judge the contents separately from the packaging, label and colour. Two completely different functions that make perfect sense for anyone who takes good olive oil seriously.
Article code MSA32. The packaging contains two separate pieces: one Fior d'olio olive oil pourer and one separate tasting glass. The pourer does not fit onto the tasting glass.
Once it is clear that you are getting two separate products, the whole thing suddenly makes perfect sense. A beautiful Alessi pourer for presenting a bottle of good olive oil elegantly at the table, and a genuine tasting glass for assessing olive oil without being distracted by its colour. Practical, educational and above all very Alessi. And the photo? We will forgive them for that.
