How to buy fine olive oil

People are so confused about what to look for and how to buy it but I think it’s really simple. The highest quality extra virgin olive oil should come in a light-blocking container. It should be produced and bottled on the same estate, which should be clearly labeled and marked with the harvest date, not just an expiration date. I pretty much steer clear of bulk Italian olive oil at this point, as there is just so much corruption in the production and selling of it.

More here.

3 Responses

  1. The olive oil I’m using now I got from the farm it was made on, in the Golan Heights. The (Israeli) farmers didn’t think they were occupying anything Syrian, as a side note; they claimed their families had been there for centuries, and I tend to believe them. They had tasting stations you could walk around to and dip bread into oils of different taste, color, thickness, and of course price…

    The Golan makes really good olive oil. Next time anyone’s on vacation they should go to Israel and schlep up into The Golan, and buy as much olive oil as they can. Just sayin’.

  2. Her first sentence is wrong: “Traditionally in the Mediterranean there was really only one fat, olive oil.”

    The most common and preferred cooking fat by far was (and is?) butterfat or samn…. The idea of the ‘standard Mediterranean diet’ … is a modern construction of food writers and publicists in Western Europe and North America earnestly preaching what is now thought to be a healthy diet to their audiences by invoking a stereotype of the healthy other on the shores of the Mediterranean. Their colleagues in Mediterranean countries are only too willing to perpetuate this myth. The fact of the matter is that the Mediterranean contains varied cultures, and that Spain is in a minority of regions (the others are Greece and southern Italy) which use olive oil as a predominant medium of cooking…. One thing which is certain, however, is that this preference does not extend to the Middle East.

    Zubaida, Sami. “National, Communal and Global Dimensions in Middle Eastern Food Cultures.” In A Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East, edited by Sami Zubaida and Richard Tapper, 33-45. London: Tauris Parke, 2000.