Defining EVOO, looking for high-quality EVOO, and weeding out the fake. I’ve been on an educational mission surrounding olive oil for the last 2 years.

I fell in love with olive oil because it’s essential, powerful, and delicious, but I’ve also come to learn that it’s complicated. 

Before I get into why olive oil is so complicated, what is olive oil?

Olive oil comes from olives being crushed down into a paste, put onto plate-like layers, and pressed. The liquid that comes out is what we know as the oil of olives. The oil is then put into a tank, where the sediment will settle to the bottom and then it is racked from the tank straight into the bottles we consume. This whole process from picking to bottling should take about 3-5 weeks.

You’ll notice something about this process, it is one harvest of olives. Quality olive oil comes from a single harvest of olives. They can be picked over a period of time but the pressing is one press, all at the same time. 

What makes a good olive oil? Isn’t olive oil all the same? No, I have learned that all olive oils are certainly not created equally. The process is quite simple, it has remained the same since practically the beginning of time and that is one of the many beautiful things about olive oil. However, if the process is done to work with “big industry” you immediately begin to lose not only the beauty of olive oil, but also the great things about it like taste, aroma, and health benefits. 

So, to ensure you are getting healthy, pure olive oil, what do you look for?

A number of things can go wrong while processing olives to decrease the value and health benefits of your oil. Let’s start with the olives. Hand-picked is the most desirable. Some large olive companies might try to make things easier by shaking the olives out of the trees with machines, but this bruises the olives in the process. Some companies might even let their olives just fall to the floor into nets they have laid. This not only bruises the olives, but the olives have started losing special qualities. So, when looking for high-quality olive oil, one thing you can seek out is “hand-picked” or talk about how the olives were cared for. 

The next thing when looking for a high-quality olive oil is to look at the vintage date. Single vintage is an extremely important, if not the most important labelling factor. If the olive oil does not have the vintage month and year stated then it is most likely a blend of oils from various years. This can be beneficial to large companies when they do not finish all their oil, they blend years together. In this case, your oil has most likely lost or is starting to lose its health benefits. It has definitely lost a layer of “purity”. Unlike wine, olive oil is meant to be consumed within 18 months from pressing.

Comprehension of all of this was attempted to be made easier with EU labelling requirements. This is where words like “extra virgin” and “cold press” come into play. Essentially any olive oil for direct human consumption is extra virgin, because that is the first pressing, making the words “first cold press” even more confusing. Those words are good to see, but essentially mean the same thing. So yes, be sure to get Extra Virgin, but to be honest I think you will have a hard time finding just “virgin” on your local shelves. “First cold press”, is also great, but second pressings are only for “virgin” oil, and cold press refers to the type of press that you pretty much have to use. 

This international council was created to monitor the quality of olives and their oil. Extra Virgin olive oil must have certain characteristics about it. But when a scandal lands an Italian man in jail because they have been importing nut oils and selling them as olive oil, where does one look? I suppose enough people looking away is exactly how something like that happens. There have been scandals like that all over the EU. Big companies cut olive oil with seed and nut oils, and sell them as pure extra virgin olive oil. They are actually able to replicate tastes and smells to add to the oils to trick consumers. But for anyone expecting the health benefits, forget it. Or worse, what happened in a small area of Spain, go blind. 

These types of scandals are plaguing the olive oil industry- but why? Of course, the major roots lie in profit, money, and being able to pay a dollar for something you can turn into twenty (or whatever their ratio is). But it also lies in the scarcity of olives in Europe. Europe does not have enough olives grown annually to create enough oil for just European demand. How are Italy, Spain, and Greece (the largest producers) to keep up with the olive oil demand of the world? Of course, there are other countries which produce oil and very good oil at that, but overall the demand is higher than the availability. Especially the availability of single vintage, fresh European olive oil. 

When I say pure, I mean it is what it says it is. Unfortunately, not everything is that way. If you want just any oil to sauté your onions, with no care about “healthy fats” or certain flavours, any olive oil is for you. But, if you are adding olive oil into your diet for taste, and especially for its health benefits, it is essential you know what you are getting. 

I grew up being told olive oil was good for me, and it took me 30 years to find out I probably hadn’t ingested a drop of healthy olive oil until I spent time in Italy. Wild! The more I research, the more I am flabbergasted by the health benefits that olive oil really has, making sure your olive oil is pure is essential for health.

Some of the health benefits that I wasn’t so clear on before include its powerful polyphenols which have antioxidant properties. Those “healthy fats” everyone was always talking about do so much more than you think; they support cardiovascular health, restore blood-brain barrier function, reduce inflammation, and prevent bone breakdown. It fosters the growth of good bacteria in the microbiome, supports your immune system with the growth of T-cells, and balances blood sugar. It’s incredible, hard to believe our kitchen basic olive oil can do all this, but exactly why choosing a quality olive oil is worth it. 

Another way your olive oil can start to spoil or lose its health benefits is through light exposure and oxidation. Ensuring you are choosing an olive with appropriate closures and protection from light is essential in retaining its healthy qualities. AKA clear bottles are not okay.

A little bit complicated, yes, but all the more worth it when you find the olive oil for you, for your kitchen. This precious oil is so much more than we were raised to think, we share in the taste of the farmer’s land, and we ingest its health benefits. It truly is liquid gold.

Checklist for knowing what you’re buying: 

1. Handpicked labelled
2. Vintage date specified
3. Extra-Virgin Olive Oil (First Cold Press) labelled
4. Packaging that does not allow light in + a sealed closure

** please note I have not cited my sources in this article. All of my learning is through articles/podcasts/books/talking to people in the industry over the last 2 years while I have started my own professional endeavour in the world of olive oil **