Good Quality Olive Oil

cone9

cone9

eXtreme
To those of you who enjoy good olive oil:
 
What oils do you buy for everyday use?
What premium oils do you buy for special purposes and when do you choose to use them?
Where do you buy?
 
Obviously, those of you in California will have access many fine oils locally that the rest us won't see on the shelves!   What online vendors do the rest of you use?
 
Our local access to better quality oils is limited.  There is the usual vast array of cheap "Italian EVOO" offerings (that are more likely than just poor quality oils made palatable though refining and blending with seeds oils).   Some grocers have a few higher priced bottles but without prior knowledge about that particular brand I recognize that price does not necessarily equate with quality.
 
I have been buying some California Olive Ranch oils found at the local Walmart.   These have been good oils at a reasonable price and even provide the harvest date on the bottle.
 
What say you?
 
 
 
 
 
Thats a Hot topic, nowadays theirs so much adulterated oil its hard to find a good one. I normally get once from Greece, dont recall the name, can get it from Italian centres but the last one due to availability I got from Costco , Greek Extra Virgin First Cold press Olive oil, "Greek Grown Olives".
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/retail/costco-embraces-greek-extra-virgin-olive-oil-amid-italian-crops-woes/
 
http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/People/Extra-virgin-olive-oil-market-is-rife-with-fraud-claims-Gaea-exec
 
If you want a special treat, I highly recommend BR Cohns Picholine EVOO. No blend here, the olives all come from one estate and are only of the Picholine variety of olives and is very small production. I know of no better olive oil coming out of Cali, Its liquid gold. Their other olive oils are good, but the Picholine is truly sublime. It often sells out
 
http://www.brcohn.com/estate-olive-oil
 
I would avoid Mcevoy Ranch olive oil, they get a lot of press (pun?) but IMO are highly overrated unless you like sharp tart oils pressed from very green unripe olives.  
 
 
For cooking I just use the Kirkland brand organic EVOO.
 
i use a lot of good olive oil for making salad dressings.  Made a garlic scape and green onion one recently and green onion one.  I also made a grilled scape pesto.  I also like to use grape seed oil and walnut oil for dressings.
 
My nutrition professor was just talking about healthy fats and olive oil the other day!
She said when buying olive oil, make sure its first cold pressed olive oil. (Adding heat to the olives allows producers to extract more oils from the olives, but simultaneously destroys the delicate flavors and aromas so prized in a good extra virgin olive oil.)
Secondly it should be in a dark glass container- not plastic or aluminum. 
And of course lastly- organic! 
 
All these qualities make the olive oil more expensive than the regular olive oils but hey if you're looking for good quality thats the way to go! :)
 
I work in NYC within reach of Eataly on a lunchtime excursion. Of those that I've tried thus far I like Mandranova Nocellara as a finishing oil. It's piquant and grassy and I put it on salads, pizza, a lof different dishes. It's a Sicilian oil.
 
I don't know what to think about the big EVOO debunking, I mean snobs say you can taste when it is real, but then in a major blind taste test, experts and major distributors of the good stuff couldn't taste the difference and the study was so embarrassing for the distributors they didn't publish it.
 
I like to think I can taste it, the good stuff to me has a buttery unripened olive fruity taste, in a good way, smooth and the coating that is left on the tongue is not processed tasting (like if you did a spoonful of peanut oil).

If it tastes like that and it is not "real" well score anyway, if it's cheaper.
 
http://www.foodrenegade.com/your-extravirgin-olive-oil-fake/
 
"70% of the extra-virgin olive oil sold in the world is fake"
 
and:
 
http://www.foodrenegade.com/how-tell-if-your-olive-oil-fake/
 
"Some of us are deluded into thinking we can taste the difference between real olive oil and fake olive oil.
 
We can not.
 
...
 
I conducted a blind tasting of extra virgin olive oils a few years ago for a national newspaper that wanted “the truth on expensive olive oil”.
 
We had a dozen oils, and a panel consisting of an importer, an Italian deli owner and a couple of eminent foodies: the results were so embarrassing and confusing the piece was never published."
 
and:
 
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/01/24/opinion/food-chains-extra-virgin-suicide.html?_r=0
 
whatev.
 
i've definitely tasted differences in olive oil, more between categories than within one, though ...
 
extra virgin vs first press or whatever ...
 
honestly, though, oils work a little bit different in terms of our perception, and i bet that while it might be hard to tell the difference between two plain oils, that a) there's a possibility for more disparity when cooled or heated, and/or b) that combinations of the oil and foods of different pH's could lead to differences ...
 
i don't like olive oil all that much, typically, and i know there's some that are far worse than others in terms of what i don't like about all of them, in my experience ...
 
It's just something to add to the list, like fake balsamic, fake sushi, fake truffle oil, fake this, that.
 
I agree with you guys. I can taste a difference between oils thus different olive types grown in different regions, I have no idea if it's the real thing, a better thing. I just know what I like in terms of taste and hope the product is as advertised. 
 
grantmichaels said:
wine tasting is fallible too, and at once isn't ...

i think it's sometimes a language problem ... well, of course i do ...
Click to expand...
Its been proven that lights in the room can effect the taste of the individual, so different lights (colour) can produce diff tastes from the same wine in tastes tests.
 
grantmichaels said:
wine tasting is fallible too, and at once isn't ...

i think it's sometimes a language problem ... well, of course i do ...
Click to expand...
 
Many many moons ago when I was a member of a wine club we often did blind tastings. When setting up a flight of bordeaux, I would always slip in a bottle of much lower priced merlot or cab franc from napa or sonoma to mess with them. I had a certain merlot I used twice in blind tastings that got identified as a very high end ($250-$500) right bank bordeaux most times. The merlot only cost $28 bucks at the time. 
 
Columela original and columela arbequina are what I like. picual and hojiblanca are not bad either 
 
Best olives come from spain imo.
 
:cheers:
 
hogleg said:
 
Many many moons ago when I was a member of a wine club we often did blind tastings. When setting up a flight of bordeaux, I would always slip in a bottle of much lower priced merlot or cab franc from napa or sonoma to mess with them. I had a certain merlot I used twice in blind tastings that got identified as a very high end ($250-$500) right bank bordeaux most times. The merlot only cost $28 bucks at the time. 
Click to expand...
there's a show on Esquire on becoming a sommelier ... it's excellent ...

the blind tastings etc ... and yeah, they miss, but they also nail 'em ...
 
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