I've always been satisfied with my grocery-bought olive oil, but also curious as to what "good" olive oil actually tastes like. Is there a brand or vendor in the US that sells such a product?
I'm a fan of PDO olive oil from regions in Greece that are known for their olive oil. Anything from Crete, Messinia, or Kalamata is usually top quality.
Since it's PDO, it's guaranteed to be a single cultivation, and from a region that takes its quality seriously.
California Olive Ranch is good. They grow and sell their own, and repackage imported oil. Their local stuff is very good quality. They have some single varietals (as opposed to blends) that are very tasty.
Yup, I second this. It's pretty much the only widely available high-quality affordable brand in the US. You tend to see chefs on cooking shows use it as their basic everyday olive oil.
There are plenty of great niche/imported brands as well, but it's pretty random as to which store might carry which ones, if any.
How can you reliably differentiate their local stuff from the oil that's mixed with imported oil, or even know whether the imported oil is EVOO?
IIRC they're no longer certified by the COOC. Given the massive amount of fraud in the olive oil industry, independent verification seems like the only tool to do that.
But even if you want to go by the seat of your pants, it seems like a bad idea to trust a company named "California Olive Ranch" whose growth into a nationally known label depends on importing olive oil from outside California.
Easy. I only — and I know this sounds silly — drink domestic :) I actively avoid imported olive oil for just the reasons you suggest. Last I looked, something like 50% of oil labelled “Italian EVOO” was in fact not, and a solid proportion of it wasn’t even olives. I’m not gambling with that, especially getting it shipped internationally.
California grows olives just fine, so I always use California oil. Now, is California Olive Ranch cheating some cheap import oil into their native EVOO? They could be; I’m betting not. My bet is that their own interests are best served by being straight here — one credible allegation of adulterating oil and their reputation takes a huge hit. Meanwhile, they can continue to charge lots of money for a high-quality product, which is just as it should be.
In large cities or tourist towns you'll likely find a shop that sells nothing but olive oil and will provide you with bits of bread to dip in order to sample it to find one you like, like an ice cream shop.
No need to get as fancy as some of the replies below would have you think. Believe it or not, Kirkland brand olive oil (yes, from Costco in the 2-liter jugs) is widely considered, even by many professionals, to be among the best olive oils on the market that you can buy at a reasonable price. I personally use it and love it, and i'm originally from a region of the world where many families had many generations spent growing their own olives and making their own oil.
I just got back from overseas and while there went to a Michelin star restaurant where we got to sample different fresh olive oils and I can confirm they did taste somewhat like grass.
Well, there are varieties, depending on the olive type you get more or less of a bitter, spicy or fruity taste. Here's a quick guide to Spanish olives used for oils:
- Picual - strong, bitter and spicy, very grassy, also one of the most common single-variety Spanish olive oils. Perfect for cooking meat, or mixing/marinating.
- Arbequina - not as strong, less spicy, with sweet, exotic fruity/grassy flavors. Awesome for making mayonnaise or ali-oli.
- Hojiblanca - somewhat middle-of-the-road, with moderate spice and bitterness, great for salads!
- Cornicabra - strength varies a lot, also spicy if harvested earlier, very sweet if harvested later. Great all-around. Tasty for cooking and for salads.
There are others, but these are the main ones. Early/late harvesting plays a significant role on taste, earlier being more bitter. In general, I love the very greenish-colored cornicabra olive oil, which are full of early harvest chlorophylls, and that are not too spicy.
Unfortunately, most non-Mediterranean (USA, UK...) grocery store extra virgin olive oils may not print the olive variety or is a blend oil produced and marketed for export...
The top recommendation is there, among other reasons, for that taste:
>This oil starts with a slight caramel flavor, but a bitter pungency blooms followed by a pleasant piquancy. We all enjoyed its grassy flavor, which one panelist said gave her “summer vegetable garden vibes.” The oil was rich but not overly fatty. One tester observed, “The way my tongue is responding reminds me of a good matcha—there’s that astringency, and then a long finish.”
100%, that was exactly what it brought to mind for me as well: like I had reached into the lawn mower bag and sprinkled in some essence of grass clippings. No thanks.
If someone wants to call olive oil without grass-clippings-taste "rancid," it's a free country, but that term comes with overbearing negative connotations so I'd personally prefer "aged" or something.
> I've always been satisfied with my grocery-bought olive oil, but also curious as to what "good" olive oil actually tastes like.
There's an initial flavor that can be idiosyncratic to where the olives were grown-- to me it's quite a bit more savory and subtle than the same kinds of flavors we associate with wines, but it's usually there.
Then there's kind of aftertaste with a slightly "spicy" burn-- if tasting a small spoonful it can sometimes make people cough.
I actually hesitate to write this as a metric lest some flavor tech in New Jersey reverse engineer it as a target for flavor additives to conola oil or some such.
Good olive oil is as complex as good wine or coffee can be. I recommend going to an olive oil shop and doing a guided tasting of a few different olive oils.
If you happen to be in NYC, Fairway sells pretty high quality olive oil under their house brand. Plus they have a tasting station in the olive oil aisle.
Other than the California brand others have mentioned, I haven’t found anything of similar quality in a supermarket, including Whole Foods and other high end markets.
Unless you buy it in small quantities and use it quickly after opening the bottle (within a week), it's rancid though.