What’s New with Supermarket Extra-Virgin Olive Oil?

Update, February 2021

The name and packaging for one of our co-winners, California Olive Ranch Destination Series Everyday Extra Virgin Olive Oil, have changed. The product itself has remained the same, but is now called California Olive Ranch Global Blend Medium Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Three Things Olive Oil Experts Wish Consumers Knew

We spoke with a variety of olive oil experts, including Alexandra Kicenik Devarenne, author of Olive Oil: A Field Guide, and asked them what they wish consumers knew about this ingredient.

Bitterness Is a Good Thing

Olives are naturally bitter, so bitterness in olive oil is a positive attribute. It can accentuate and enhance flavors in your dishes, so don’t be scared of it. Like pungency, it signals the presence of healthy compounds. The European Union permits product labels to claim there are health benefits associated with the polyphenols that cause bitter, pungent flavors.

Use It When Cooking

Cooking with an inexpensive supermarket extra-virgin olive oil and finishing and dressing with a better-quality extra-virgin olive oil is a thrifty way to go. The heat of sautéing or roasting will make minor flaws in a lesser-quality oil disappear, so using it for cooking is fine. And don’t worry about smoke point: In the test kitchen, we found that with a smoke point of 410 degrees, extra-virgin olive oil is fine for most cooking applications, even frying.

Don’t Let It Sit for Too Long 

Olive oil is a perishable product. Good-quality extra-virgin olive oil, properly packaged and stored in a cool, dark place, will be good for two years at least, but use it within a month or two once it’s opened. And if an oil is rancid when you open it before the “best by” date (its smell may remind you of stale nuts, crayons, or putty), don’t use it—and consider taking it back to the store for a refund.   

What’s That Peppery Aftertaste?

While tasting the extra-virgin olive oils in our lineup, we often found ourselves coughing in reaction to the peppery aftertaste of a few of the samples, especially during the plain tasting. That tingling, slightly numbing sensation in the back of the throat is normal when tasting olive oils. 

Extra-virgin olive oil contains oleocanthal, a naturally occurring phenolic compound that contains antioxidants and shares the anti-inflammatory properties of ibuprofen, according to scientists at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This sensation is called “pungency” among professional olive oil tasters, and it’s considered a desirable trait, along with “olive-fruitiness” and bitterness. These three characteristics are present to varying degrees in every extra-virgin olive oil. 

Pepperiness is far more prominent in oils that are pressed from greener, less-ripe olives. The antioxidants in peppery oil are not only good for your health but also work to help preserve the freshness of the oil by fighting oxidation, which causes it to turn rancid. What’s more, its anti-inflammatory effects are one of the reasons that scientists believe the Mediterranean diet, which is olive oil–rich, is so healthy. 

If an extra-virgin olive oil’s pepperiness sometimes bothers you, consider trying a milder, later-harvest option. But don’t give up on oils with a peppery aftertaste: We find that peppery oil’s extra “kick” works surprisingly well to complement and enhance the flavor of many dishes—and when eaten with food, it won’t make you cough.

Robust or Bust?

Some olive oil manufacturers have recently brought to market “robust” versions that they tout as having more assertive flavor profiles than their standard extra-virgin oils. “We launched this within the past year,” explained Lisa Pandolfini, vice president of marketing at Borges S.A., the parent company that produces Star Olive Oil. “Descriptions help consumers understand how to use the oils. Our robust has more of a bite to it,” she said. Similarly, other brands in our lineup have begun promoting a variety of flavor intensities in their olive oils. Since in previous tastings we’ve felt that supermarket extra-virgin olive oil was fairly bland, we were hopeful that this meant there would be more flavorful choices at the grocery store. Overall, this wasn’t the case.

Why Harvest Dates Matter

Olive oil is a seasonal crop, and the harvest date tells you how fresh it is. In our lineup, only Bertolli, California Olive Ranch, and Lucini listed a harvest date on their bottles. This is something usually seen only on premium olive oil where the growing, pressing, and processing of the oil is closely controlled by the manufacturer, like fine vintage wines.

Olive oil makers pick olives at the stage of ripeness that will yield the flavor they’re looking for. Greener, less-ripe olives make grassier, more pungent, and peppery oil, while black, fully ripe olives produce much milder, more buttery oil, with less peppery aftertaste. In the northern hemisphere—including Europe, North Africa, and the United States—olives start to ripen in September and the season finishes in February or March, so producers harvest and press olives during those months; in the southern hemisphere—including South America and Australia—olives ripen in the opposite months, so the harvest runs from March to July. The oil is stored in stainless-steel tanks and filtered to remove tiny olive particles. (If the particles are left in, the oil spoils faster. You can buy unfiltered oil, usually from small producers, but you need to use it up quickly.) 

What does this mean for you? Oil can be stored in steel tanks for many months—or years— before it is bottled, and the “best by” date printed on the label is two years after that. By contrast, a harvest date tells you when the fruit was pressed, so it’s easier to gauge its freshness. 

The freshest, newest crop of premium olive oil from the northern hemisphere is bottled and sent to stores by late spring or early summer (it takes six weeks to ship from Europe) and would have the prior year as the harvest date on the bottle. You’ll often find the older vintage oils (from the year before that) on sale around this time as retailers seek to clear shelves. If it’s a good oil and was stored well, it will taste fine—so you may get a real bargain. 

That said, because most supermarket oils are made up of several oils harvested over months across different countries, a specific harvest date is harder to set. California Olive Ranch’s Destination Series bottles may have a harvest date, but the company lists two full years, such as 2017–2018, given that the oil now comes from a blend of oils from both hemispheres. In the past, the company indicated a single harvest year for its California-grown oil. Our co-winner from Bertolli listed a specific month and year on its bottle and printed a list of all possible countries of origin on the label while also indicating which sources were in that particular bottle. As a result, we knew that the oil we tasted had been harvested from four northern hemisphere countries six months earlier.