How to Choose the Best Olive Oil

Do You Speak Olive Oil?

Most people choose olive oil by the label design and the price. Neither tells you much. What follows is the checklist I use, the questions to ask a bottle before you pay for it. Most of the answers should be printed on the label. If they aren't, that is also an answer.

Buy Extra Virgin, and Know What It Means

Extra virgin is a grade, not a mood. In the EU, an oil earns it only if it is extracted by mechanical means alone (no heat, no chemicals), stays at or below 0.8% free acidity, passes a full chemical analysis and is approved by an official panel of trained tasters. Earned, not given.

Anything below that is sold as virgin or plain "olive oil", which is usually refined and blended. Extra virgin is the entry ticket. The rest of this list separates a good extra virgin from one that only has the words on it.

Look for "Cold-Extracted"

Under EU labelling rules, "cold extraction" or "first cold pressing" may only be printed if the oil was extracted below 27 °C. Warming the olive paste gets more oil out of it, and costs the oil its aroma and freshness. Today almost all oil is made in a centrifuge, not a press, so "cold-extracted" is the more accurate term. Either way, it means nobody turned up the heat to raise the yield.

A fresh, cold-extracted oil should taste green, a little bitter, and catch at the back of your throat. That pepper comes from polyphenols. Good producers measure them and publish the number. Ours: 548 mg/kg in the EVOO and 643 mg/kg in the Centenarian, tested per batch by an independent lab.

Look for Certifications: EU Organic, USDA Organic, PDO

A certification means someone other than the producer checked. EU Organic comes with a certificate code you can look up. Ours is GR-BIO-03, through BIOHELLAS. USDA Organic works the same way.

A PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) goes further. It ties the oil to one place and one way of making it. Ours is PDO Messara: grown, harvested and pressed on the Messara plain in Crete.

"We use organic practices, we're just not certified" is not a certification. It is a sentence.

Choose Dark Glass or Tin

Olive oil grows in the sun, and once it's bottled, light is its enemy. Clear glass on a bright supermarket shelf is the worst place it can be. Choose dark glass or a tin, not plastic. Even the finest oil needs its SPF.

Check the Harvest Date, Not Only the Best-Before

Extra virgin olive oil doesn't age like wine. It is at its best in the months after milling. The best-before date is usually set 24 months from bottling and tells you nothing about when the olives came off the tree. The harvest date does.

In Greece the harvest runs from October to January. Look for the most recent one. If a bottle only shows a best-before, you don't know how old the oil is. Ours has the harvest date printed on the label.

Store It Cool and Dark

On the tree, olives love the Cretan sun. In the bottle, the oil doesn't. Keep it away from the stove and the window, in a cool, dark cupboard, tightly closed, and not in the fridge. A small bottle by the stove for daily use, the rest in the cupboard. Once opened, use it within one to two months.

Ask Where It Comes From

Who produced it? When was it harvested? Where were the olives grown, and which variety? Where was it bottled? These aren't trivia. They are what separates an oil you can check from one you have to trust.

In the trade this is called traceability. In the kitchen it's called knowing what you eat.

Small Batch, Numbered

"Small batch" is a claim everyone makes and few prove. The proof is a number. Our current batches are 2,234 and 2,355 bottles, each numbered by hand. The next batch comes with the next harvest. That isn't a sales line. It is how olive trees work.

What It Costs

Good extra virgin olive oil costs more than supermarket oil, and it should. Every step has a price: a single variety, organic certification, a lab analysis per batch, glass, bottling in Crete and shipping across the Atlantic. You get what you pay for. The question is whether you can see what you are paying for.

Read the Lab Analysis

A serious producer publishes one: free acidity, peroxide value, UV absorption, polyphenols, pesticide residues. You don't need to read every line. Free acidity (0.8% is the legal limit for extra virgin, and ours is 0.20%) and total polyphenols tell you most of what you need. Ours is published on the product page, with the date of the test.

Know the Region and the Variety

Greece, Italy and Spain all make excellent oil, and all three make bad oil too. The country on the label matters less than the place and the tree. Ours is 100% Koroneiki from the Messara plain in southern Crete. One variety, one plain, one producer: Sifis Sklavakis, fourth generation.

We don't like to play favorites. (We're Greek. We do.)

Our Oil: Turn the Bottle

Premium Greek Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Yes, the name is long. So is the label. Turn the bottle and you'll find:

• Harvest date
• LOT number
• Bottle number, handwritten, and the size of the batch
• Producer code (organic certified)
• Bottling facility code: EL 40090, Avgeniki, Crete
• Variety: 100% Koroneiki

Nothing hidden. Nothing rounded off. Here is how it compares with a typical premium bottle:

The bottle also looks good, which helps when it's a gift. That is the last thing on this list, and it should be.

Food of the Gods

In the myths, ambrosia and nektar were the food and drink of the gods on Olympus. Ours is made on the ground by farmers in Crete who don't rush, don't cut corners and don't compromise.

And yes, they o-lived happily ever after.

Thank you for reading, and for asking your olive oil the right questions.