We tasted another bottle sourced from Spain and Portugal (with harvest dates of 022-a blend of two harvest years). The bottle we first tried used olives from Spain and Tunisia (with a harvest date of 2021/2022). Note: This oil is a global blend, which means the olives are sourced from all over the world. This would be a great oil to eat with bread. It felt fatty and buttery in the mouth, but the aftertaste was clean and pleasant, and it had a satisfying, tickly pungency, which is a good indicator of freshness. One tester said, “This is what I imagine olive oil should taste like.” The oil had some lively notes of tomato and artichoke, with a sharp bitterness and some lingering astringency. We all agreed this oil was one of the more complex that we tried.

One of us thought it smelled strongly of tomatoes with a hint of basil. Multiple testers initially smelled petrol, but it gave way to more tropical fruit aromas, including guava, on subsequent whiffs.

The Bertolli Extra Virgin Olive Oil Rich Taste (about 36¢ per ounce) had one of the most pronounced grassy and peppery notes of any olive oil we tried. Here are the ones that stood out in our tests. Our goal was to find good all-purpose extra-virgin olive oils that could be used for cooking (which EVOO is great for, by the way) but also for salad dressings and bread dipping. We focused on those with printed harvest dates, which are the most reliable way to make sure your oil is fresh. Many bottles have been sitting on store shelves far longer than they should, with oil that’s past its prime or cut with inferior oils.Īfter researching over 40 bottles of oil and speaking with a trained olive oil taster to help define our criteria, we tested 15 olive oils available at national grocery store chains across the country. Out of the dizzying variety of olive oil brands at your local supermarket, we wanted to find the ones that are actually worth buying. But that moment will quickly sour if the oil you’re using is rancid. Drizzling good olive oil over perfectly ripe tomatoes and mopping it up with a crusty knob of bread is one of the greatest pleasures of summertime.

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