Good olive oil tastes fresh, has a complex, aromatic flavour and structure. It is after all, a juice and not merely a fat.

It offers tastes of green grass, blossoms or fruits. By no means is it boring. Extra virgin olive oil should taste bitter and stingingly sharp. Besides this, it should taste fresh. It should have a balanced green colour, while the acidity content of “extra virgin” olive oil may not exceed 0.8 percent acidity. The rule of thumb applied is: the lower the degree of acidity, the better the olive oil. Moreover, a good olive oil must be made like a good vintner’s wine – with hand-held craftsmanship and expertise, with tradition and technology, with taste and character.

Olive oils always contain polyphenols and oleocanthal in intensity levels that vary depending on the variety. Both are very healthy secondary phytochemical substances and they shape and define the structure of the good oil. Polyphenols are bitter. Oleocanthal is sharp and peppery. An olive oil in which this structure is no longer discernible, is stale, from a chemical standpoint, whether this is indeed due to it being stale, or also potentially the result of excessive contact with light, air, temperature or water.