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Extra Virgin Vault

About Extra Virgin Vault

Extra Virgin Vault is an independent catalog of extra virgin olive oils sold direct from producers. Our aim is to make it easier to find fresh, well made oil, see the evidence behind it and buy it from the grower rather than an opaque supply chain.

I'm Robert Kingston. I am not a producer, importer, or competition organiser. I started Extra Virgin Vault in 2025 as an Australian consumer who contended with a problem: there is a lot of excellent olive oil, but many are hidden on a layrinth of websites - often missing from Google.

The site began as a private list for friends and family who wanted something better than a supermarket house brand. It is now a public index of oils, producers, growing regions, and varieties, with chemistry, awards, harvest dates, and rankings that try signpost the strongest evidence first.

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What you can do here

Extra Virgin Vault is a research index only - Purchase links go to the producer's own website.

Independence

We are not part of the extra virgin olive oil industry. Listings are not sold. Rankings, badges and recognised awards cannot be bought. Extra Virgin Vault is not a laboratory, certifier or industry body.

Badges describe the evidence available to us - They don't guarantee authenticity, sensory quality or how an oil will perform in your kitchen.

How listings work

The catalog includes producers who sell extra virgin olive oil direct to consumers from their own website. Price is not a barrier to inclusion: an expensive bottle is not automatically better, and a modestly priced one is not excluded.

We do give more ranking weight to producers with reviewed chemistry, recognised competition results, a clear harvest history, and a confirmed listing. Oils without that evidence can still appear but they simply sit lower until stronger information is recorded.

Most updates come from Extra Virgin Vault's catalog pipeline, which revisits producer shop pages for price, availability, and new releases. Producers and readers can also submit or update a listing.

Research and verification

Harvest years, varieties, prices, and reported chemistry are taken from producer published data and Extra Virgin Vault's catalog pipeline. Shop pages, harvest notes, product sheets, and laboratory reports the producer makes available are recorded against the matching oil and harvest year. The pipeline revisits those pages for price, availability, and new releases.

Chemistry Reviewed means Extra Virgin Vault has sighted a release-specific laboratory report or certificate of analysis (COA). Sighting a document is not independent testing. Extra Virgin Vault does not test oils, sample batches, or certify authenticity of chemistry data.

Reported units and analytical methods are not harmonised. Phenolic figures may be published as mg/kg or mg/L, and laboratories are not treated as interchangeable. Catalog wide chemistry summaries are on reported chemistry. How reviewed evidence is distinguished from published figures is on Trust and Evidence.

Tasting and reviews

Internal tasting notes and ratings on Extra Virgin Vault are informal evaluations by me, Robert Kingston. They describe fruitiness, bitterness, pungency, and defects as a buying aid. They are not an accredited IOC panel result, and they are not a competition jury score.

Recognised competition medals are recorded separately from Extra Virgin Vault tasting notes. A medal on a listing comes from a reviewed competition, not from an Extra Virgin Vault tasting. See the tasting guide for tasting at home, and competition award agreement for how official medals compare across competitions.

How ranking works

Each oil receives an overall score intended as a buying aid and ranking algorithm. It combines:

  • Freshness: Harvest and release dating, with more recent oil favoured
  • Quality: Reported chemistry, recognised awards, varieties and production practices such as single estate or onsite milling
  • Trust: How complete the listing is, whether chemistry documents have been reviewed and whether the producer has confirmed their details

Producer contact is tracked separately from chemistry and awards. If Extra Virgin Vault has written to a producer and received no confirmation after 14 days, the listing can show a Research Pending badge. That badge does not mean the oil is illegitimate or poor quality. A well-tested oil can still have research pending, but we do limit its visibility in the index.

The full badge model, including Chemistry Reviewed, Competition Qualified, and Award Recognised, is documented on Trust and Evidence.

Recognised competitions

Competition medals are useful only when we can say what they actually establish. Extra Virgin Vault reviews each competition year's published rules before those awards can influence scores. We look for official result, a tie them to a current release, a documented sensory assessment and, for the strongest class, mandatory chemistry qualification.

Design, packaging, marketing, health-claim, and flavoured-oil awards may appear on a listing, but they do not feed the quality score.

Competitions that currently contribute to scores

These competitions have a reviewed quality stream for at least one recent year:

Class A competitions require documented sensory assessment, release traceability and mandatory chemistry for the quality stream. Class B competitions provide official sensory results without mandatory chemistry. Class A awards contribute more to quality scores than Class B. An award never verifies chemistry figures Extra Virgin Vault has not seen.

Competitions recorded but not yet scored

Awards from competitions whose current rules have not been fully reviewed are kept on the listing when we have a source. They remain neutral until that review is complete. That currently includes the Australian Golden Olive Awards and the London International Olive Oil Competition, as well as later years of otherwise recognised competitions when a fresh rules pack is not yet available.

See competition award agreement for how often recognised competitions assign the same broad medal tier to the same release.

For producers

If you grow or bottle extra virgin olive oil and sell it direct, you are welcome in the catalog. Use Add or update a listing to send oil details, or contact us with laboratory reports, harvest dates, or corrections.

A reply from you or an authorised representative is what turns a listing into Details Confirmed. Automatic acknowledgements do not count.

Corrections and updates

If a listing figure, harvest year, or award is wrong, use the contact form and include:

  • the listing URL
  • the release year
  • the disputed figure or award
  • a verifiable source, such as the COA or official competition results

Accepted corrections update catalog records. Later catalog statistics snapshots include those changes on the next calculation.

Get in touch

Questions and press enquiries go through the contact form. For catalog data, see the API documentation.