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Extra Virgin Vault

How to buy

Olive oil buyer’s guide

How I pick a bottle in a shop, or on a producer’s site. Harvest year, extra virgin on the label, a named variety if I can get it. After that it depends whether it’s going on bread or into a cake. The oils below are listed here, so you can see what that looks like.

Start here

Four things on the bottle

You can do this standing in an aisle. Fail these and I walk away. Pass them, and then I start thinking about mild versus peppery.

  1. 1. Grade

    It has to say extra virgin

    If it says pure, light, or just olive oil, it’s been refined. This whole site is about extra virgin.

  2. 2. Date

    Find a harvest year

    Look for a harvest year, not a best-before. Best-before can be printed two years after the fruit came off the tree.

  3. 3. Package

    Dark glass, cool shelf

    Clear bottles in a window have already had a hard life. Buy dark glass or tin, in a size you’ll finish in a month or two.

  4. 4. Identity

    Name the fruit

    A producer, a place, and a variety beat packed in Italy and Mediterranean blend. After that, match how punchy it is to the food.

The small print

What to read on the bottle

Most of the useful stuff is in small print. I marked the six things I actually read.

Northern harvests are roughly October to February, southern April to July. So a 2026 Australian or New Zealand oil can already be in shops, while a 2026 Italian oil might not exist yet. There’s a polyphenol estimator if you want a rough idea of what happens after months in a cupboard.

If they publish a test

Explore the chemistry tests and diagrams →

What the lab numbers mean

If a producer publishes a number, you can type it in below. It gets compared with oils recorded here, not the whole market, and only if the tests used the same method and units.

Compared with what’s listed here

recorded values here. Median . More on the chemistry findings.

Flavour

Five varieties I keep coming back to

You don’t need fifty of them. These five cover most cooking. Mild oils vanish into cake batter; robust ones announce themselves on bread. There’s a longer list on the varieties page, and a tasting wheel if you want names for what you’re smelling.

A couple from the list

I haven’t got a matching example on this page. The variety page has the rest.

Cooking

Depends what you’re cooking

Peppery oil on a green salad, milder oil on fish, and the good bottle on things you don’t heat. Extra virgin is fine in a pan; I just wouldn’t fry with the one I bought for bread. For pan temperature, there’s a smoke-point predictor.

Say:

I’d look for . first.

Oils like this

When to walk away

Check the bottle in front of you

I do this on supermarket shelves and on product pages. One of these makes me look harder. Three and I leave.

Bottle warning signs

If you only remember three things

Three common buys

Supermarket shelf

Ignore anything in clear glass, anything dusty, and anything labelled light or pure. If two extra virgin bottles are left, take the darker one with a harvest from this year or last. Don’t try to taste it in the aisle.

Producer website

Harvest year, variety, and at least one lab number. Around here the median FFA is about %. A medal is nice. A date is better.

Two bottles at home

If I could only keep two: a mild Arbequina for cake and fish, and something peppery (Koroneiki, Picual, or Coratina) for bread and steak. One bottle only? Frantoio, and don’t bake a delicate cake with it.

From here

  • The oils list lets you filter by harvest, variety, and chemistry.
  • If you’re stuck between bottles, start from the catalogue.
  • If you want names for what you’re tasting, that’s the tasting guide.