My parents retired to Italy a number of years ago, to a place with a hundred or so olive trees in the garden, and each November some of us head over to pick the olives (much to the amusement of the locals, who think we're crazy to do agricultural work in our spare time) and take them to a nearby pressing plant (where you can wander around and see the process to make sure your harvest isn't being mixed up with other, lesser olives). The end result is much spicier and harsher than anything I've ever bought. Personally I think it's delicious, but I'm hardly an unbiased judge...

There is absolutely no way anybody who is serious about olive oil could mistake a serious Tuscan or Greek olive oil for Bertolli, for exactly the reason the article points out: serious olive oil has a grassy, peppery flavor that fills your throat and sinuses; it's unmistakeable, like the difference between a 3 Floyds Dreadnaught DIPA and Bud Light, and the reason Bertolli has "corrupted" extra virgin olive oil is that American consumers won't routinely buy it. I find the anecdote at the beginning of the article hard to reconcile with the rest of the piece!

(Bertolli-style oil is a fine thing to have in your kitchen, too; you might not want your mayonnaise to taste like strong Greek olive oil.)

Does anyone have any tips for finding quality olive oil?

The only way I've had success is to buy inexpensive single-source stuff, even if it's inexpensive and non-Italian. Best olive oils I've had were single-sourced from Spain; $2 from a discount store. Maybe no-one wants to fake non-Italian oil?

For more on this, see the New Yorker's 2007 article "Slippery Business: The trade in adulterated olive oil" at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_....

I'm surprised "they" haven't worked to further regulate the field; apparently one problem is that developing chemical tests to reliably discern real from fake olive oil is very difficult.

I use olive oil regularly in my cooking and now, I don't know what to think.

I'm curious why the original article wasn't the one submitted (though it's inserted at the bottom of that entry).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/13/extra-virginity-...

UC Davis does olive oil testing a little more systematically:

http://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu/services/services

I found my favorite olive oil, Alfar La Maja, in a small shop in San Sebastian, Spain. It comes from Mendavia, Spain, which is part of the Navarra region and is well known for its' olive production. At the time I bought it I had no idea it would be the best olive oil I've ever had, but I had two things working in my favor: 1) San Sebastian's residents and tourists are incredibly serious about food, 2) it was fresh, single source, small production, local, etc.

Later, I looked it up online, and found this gem -- according to the NY Olive Oil competition, "Alfar La Maja is one of the world's best extra virgin olive oils for 2013."

Fairway in the NY area has an olive oil bar with about dozen varieties and bread for dipping. Most are domestic and labelled as such. The nuance in flavor is easily detectable. I find most supermarket brands taste about the same. The olive taste is so distinct you'd never confuse it for canola, corn or anything else.

There are many kinds of olive varieties, some of them growing in the span of one or two towns. Saying it is supposed to taste like this or like that without saying from which kind of olives it was made sounds kind of nonsensical.

Another matter is that of honesty. Italy is known to export more olive oil than it produces and it is buying production from quite a lot of towns in my country and then mixing it and packaging it with oils from other places.

If you want good olive oil, try to find small productions, ensure that it was stored in the dark if possible and taste it first (dipping bread on the oil not just sprinkling, it should be quite soaked). Supermarket olive oil of any price is only suitable for frying, that much is known.

That the rougher taste is the most original reminds me of that old story I found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3201540

My first experience with proper olive oil was ordering some from http://www.amphoranueva.com/ after one of their coratina oils was suggested by someone on some forum who'd done chemical assaying on a number of oils looking for polyphenol content, as relevant to some moderately supported study results on positive health outcomes.

I couldn't have been happier with the result... and even if you use a fair amount of oil it still takes a while to go through 750ml of the stuff, so that fact that it's $18/bottle doesn't break the bank. (and it keeps well if kept isolated from air and light) Er, well, I mean used properly: raw in food, not for cooking. You shouldn't heat good evo as its smoke point is lower than random supermarket mystery olive oil, and heating it removes most of the flavor anyways.

Opinions may differ though, I could certainly see some people really disliking the grassy acidic flavor of strong EVO.

Really interesting article, OP. I love coming across these type of links on HN — just seems like it happens less often these days.

Anyone know a good olive oil obtainable in NYC?

(I'd rather not pay huge shipping fees for some of the other things listed here.)

Personally, I only use grapeseed oil. I've tried olive, it's too heavy. Tried canola, it's okay. But grapeseed is amazing. It has no particular flavor, you could drink it and not become sick from the heavy load that typical oils will give you, etc.

I thought everybody knew this already. Store-bought (TJ, WF, etc.) doesn't look, taste and isn't priced anything like the real thing. If you didn't see it go in the bottle yourself, it probably has cheaper oils mixed in. Caveat emptor.

Here's a plug for my local olive oil producer: http://www.bvranch.com/

Quality conscious and low on bullshit.

I use lemon pressed olive oil on almost all my cooking now and it's delicious.

Many people buy into the supposed health benefits on olive oil, which probably boils down to its phenolic content. However, this depends on many things and drops over time.

The end of this article has some tips to ensure getting the best oil.

http://news.discovery.com/earth/plants/olive-oil-health-bene...

Best olive oil is Greek. Italian or Spanish ones are nowhere near the quality of Greek. In Greece more than 80% of total production is extra virgin while in Italy the percentage is less than 40% and in Spain 20%. Italians buy bulk olive oil from Greece and they mix it with their own oils to raise the quality. There are small brands that offer high quality extra virgin oil and I guess you could look some of them at your local super market or grocery store. If you want top quality you should look for small privately owned brands rather than big companies, at least for Greek oil. A few well known and trusted producers are Gaea [1], Papadimitriou [2], WEP [3], Eleia [4], Moria Elea Deluce [5], Maleas [6].

[1] http://www.gaea.gr/, [2] http://www.papadim.com/en/products/extra-virgin-olive-oil/, [3] http://www.fiveoliveoil.com/five-olive-oil-from-greece/, [4] http://www.eleia.gr/index_en.html, [5] http://www.moriaelea.com/?page_id=42, [6] http://www.maleasoliveoil.gr/en/olive-oil.

Beware of 'local' oils, too. A few years back, I ran a food truck that served Belgian style fries. I tested a lot of oils and decided on olive oil, but everything I could buy at the store or farmers' markets were prohibitively expensive. After some research, I found a regional seller (I'm in Texas) that imports olive oil from throughout Europe and Africa. We ultimately settled on an African import that to me had the best flavor of the bunch.

The interesting things I took away from my meeting with this man were:

1. A lot (if not most) olive oils sold in markets are blends of oil that include cheap oils such as canola.

2. Many local producers throughout the country were unable to meet demand...so they would buy from him and then add to their "locally produced" olive oil which they would in turn sell at a huge premium on site, at farmers markets, and at grocery stores.

I don't have the business any longer, so unfortunately I don't have access to my supplier anymore. For now, I get all of my olive oil via Whole Foods...their store brand is the best priced and I assume that they have some relationships with their producers which minimizes the chance of being hoodwinked.

"But fyi, there is an ever-growing list of recommended oils on my website: www.extravirginity.com. Best wishes, Tom Mueller"[0]

The only reason I quote the book's author is because on the Amazon review site, he exchanges some additional thoughts on olive oil with some Amazon users.

Here is the list, which is linked from Mueller's site: http://www.truthinoliveoil.com/great-oil

[0] http://www.amazon.com/review/R8G1CO1XY4DJ7/ref=cm_cr_rev_det...

Here's what you do. Make friends with immigrants that still have connections to their olive oil producing motherland. They either get shipments from their family, know somebody else in their community that gets shipments, or know somebody back home that may be willing to ship some. Ask them if you can buy some from them. Or, be nice to them and they may offer you some as a gift. I've done this on many occasions, and it's always very much appreciated.

And FYI, not many people press their own olives anymore. Typically they'll bring their harvest to a factory that will do it for them. And the pressing that is done is typically not a cold press, and they're certainly going to press it more than once. Oil is food, they're not just going to throw food away to be fancy. But what you will get from this process is still miles above anything you will get at the grocery store.

If you don't know what you're looking for, you don't have someone you trust to help you, and you're unable to sample each oil in a taste test, the best way to buy high quality Italian olive oil is to look for the D.O.P. (in Italian; P.D.O. in English) certification symbol on the bottle [1, 2]. There's a similar looking symbol if the produce is also organic. This symbol means that inspectors have physically gone over the entire operation of the producers and checked it against a list of standards.

Other things to look for: the bottle says if it's filtered or unfiltered (the unfiltered stuff has much more of a peppery kick), there is a production date, there is a best before date, it says that the oil has been cold-pressed and mechanically extracted, and there is an indication of the region of Italy that the olives come from.

I have never been disappointed by using this method, but of course not every good oil is certified. For reference, today I bought Planeta DOP Val di Mazara oil, which is even available on Amazon [3]. Their price is 50% more expensive than what I paid though.

[1] http://italian.about.com/b/2008/07/19/waiter-my-cheese-has-b...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_t...

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Planeta-Extra-Virgin-Olive-Oil/dp/B005...

Yes: order it from Zingermans online. Zingermans is a mail-order deli in Ann Arbor, a sort of culinary Mecca, and they specialize in sourcing lots of interesting olive oils. Their descriptions of those olive oils is pretty much dead on.

Get a couple Paesano loaves to go with it (throw the extra loaves in your freezer). I don't know what it is about that bread --- I think they mill some of their own flour --- but it is crazy and addictive.

Well, shit. This thread just cost me $400.

The article implies that you should find something that tastes good for you, not fetishize the origin/process.

I know a thing or two about olive oil. My family has had olive trees for centuries---probably since the Roman Empire.

A decent heuristic for finding good olive oil is to look for small producers that cultivate weird local olive varieties. These are generally the ones aiming at high quality. Such varieties are usually much less profitable.

Don't listen to people saying that Greek oil is the best one. That's utter non-sense, and a gross generalization. It's like saying that French cars are better than German ones. Sure, some French cars are awesome, but the Germans produce some fine ones too.

I'm Italian, and my favorite variety is Manzanilla Cacereña---a really weird olive oil from mid-West Spain. There are some fine Portuguese, French, Italian, Greek... ones as well. Just find a good local producer through the Internet and get it shipped to your place. I buy everything using this procedure. It's a bit inconvenient initially, but once you find your suppliers...

I've been buying California Olive Ranch oil for a while, after reading this: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/dining/californias-olive-o... . It's about $16 – $17 for 750ml or about $20 – $21 for 1 liter. That's more expensive than generic olive oil but less expensive than many of the alternatives.

My family actually runs a small oil-producing olive grove in Tasmania, Australia.

Our olives are hand-picked and cold pressed within 24 hours of picking. We produce about 200-250L of oil per year so it is a boutique operation.

We are currently bottling our 2013 oil and have a few bottles in excess of our pre-orders. If anyone on HN is interested in a bottle of gold medal standard Tasmanian oil, please message me for the details.

Find a place that does olive oil tastings and taste them. Seriously.

The Spanish wonder why Americans like Italian olive oil. The Italians wonder why Europeans like Spanish olive oil. The Greeks wonder why people call anything but what comes from Greece olive oil. The French wonder why everyone doesn't use butter.

But the fact is, the best olive oil is the one you like best. I'm lucky enough to be in the Bay Area and olive oil tastings are very easy to come by and so I've found a couple California olive oils that suit me just fine.

Well we came across Lucero [1] at a farmer's market, they are a California company, and drove up to their factory and did the tour. It isn't European or African oil but we like it.

[1] http://www.lucerooliveoil.com/

If you've got a Costco membership, their extra virgin Toscano is a great tasting oil (if you like that peppery back-of-the-throat taste) and a bargain, about $15/liter in a glass bottle.

I'm not sure if it's available at all locations, seems to come and go seasonally at mine.

Nash's organic olive oil - http://www.nashsoliveoil.com/

He's at the San Rafael, CA farmers market every Sunday and Alemany market in SF on Saturdays. He also ships anywhere in the US.

my limited experience fits your theory - we just noticed that one particular make smelt awesome when we opened it. turns out it was locally produced (i was living in the north of chile at the time; i suspect i bought it because it was cheap!). we've now found someone who sells it down here in santiago (not so cheap, but no more expensive than the imported stuff).