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One of the most common question that we get asked, from new connoisseurs of extra virgin olive oil or from just curious customers who want to be more informed about the EVO oil‘s world is this one right here:”But which color and flavor a very nice and high quality extra virgin oil has to have? What we should look for when we want to buy a good olive oil?”.
We, here at Frantoio Bonamini, have the right answers of course and today we really want to share them with you all.
If you want to make sure that you are getting a good quality extra virgin olive oil, there are three important aspects to pay attention to:
The easiest and the immidiate one is the visual aspect, or rather how really olive oil looks like when we first take a look at it. Yes, people do think it is truly the easiest aspect to admire when they are analyzing the color of extra virgin olive oil, but right for this specific reason it is also the one they should trust least. In fact, the color of olive oil has no relevance at all, on the contrary it tends to influence our objective judgment; that’s why during awards ceremonies or professional tastings olive oil is put in blu/red glasses, because in this way the taster is not influenced by the color of the olive oil which is about to taste.
Despite what just said, when it’s time to evaluate the color of extra virgin oil, there’s anyway a specific color that would be best to look for and find.
In fact, if an EVO oil has a greenish color then, it means that it was produced with green olives, maybe some still unripe; if olive oil shows a more yellonish color, then it probably means that the olives used in this case were more ripe and for this reason had a darker color first of all.
Eventually there’s only one rule to follow: if the color of EVO oil is between green and bright yellow, then you can be 100% sure you bought a young, fresh and high quality olive oil. Try to avoid those extra virgin oils which has a pale color because that means a low quality products or it can also means frauds.
Now let’s talk about the other two aspects to consider while evaluating a good extra virgin olive oil, which are smell and taste of olive oil.
About the olfactory aspect we can easily say that high quality extravirgin oil has a fresh and nice smell at first; that which reminds of fresh cut grass, olive tree’s leaves or, if we talk about the diffrent types of olives, it can also reminds tomatoes, artichokes or green pulp fruits or in the caso of the olive types that we grow in our area it can also reminds yellow flesh fruits such as apple, banana or pear.
Try to avoid those olive oils which smell like rancid or mold even from the first bottle opening, it probably means that they were either kept in the wrong way or that the olives were in a pretty bad shapre when used.
If we talk about the taste of extra virgin olive oil then here it’s a little bit more complicated but as well as interesting and fascinating.
In terms of taste, an extra virgin oil should always have that spicy and slightly bitter taste; these two are the most important features and something to look for when looking for an excellent EVO oil. In fact, when olive oil is a little itchy, it means it is fresh, it has a good amount of those called polyphenols and it has a low acidity, a crucial factor to not forget about when buying an extra virgin olive oil. Furthermore that perception of the bitter aftertaste of olive oil is attributable to the different olives types, to their levels of ripeness and to the different blends were made at the beginning of the production.
The gustatory aspect of an extra virgin olive oil can only be proved if it’s tasted in the correct way. In fact, the only way to taste EVO oil is sipping it, keeping it in the mouth for about 30 seconds, between the tongue and the palate while aerating it (through a practice called “strippaggio”) so that it’s possible to detect all the flavors.
Here’s for you then 3 and 3 of the best and worst tastes to pay attention to when evaluating the taste of an extra virgin olive oil:
Learning how to tell of an extra virgin olive oil is good or not only by its color and taste is important to avoid any kind of frauds.
None of us wants to waste some money on something that it’s worth it, it’s not good and maybe it could potentially be also unhealthy.
But to always have some kind of “manual”, like the one above, when it comes to evaluating the color and the taste of extra virgin oil, this really helps to correctly dive you into that kind of a “commercial jungle” we find in front of our eyes when it’s time to buy some EVO oil.
