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I look for the D.O.P and/or organic farming mark, along with a production date, a best before date, and the region of Italy. I'm pretty sure it's ok, and it is

by isolate 11y ago

I look for the D.O.P and/or organic farming mark, along with a production date, a best before date, and the region of Italy. I'm pretty sure it's ok, and it isn't cheap. I've heard that the best way to understand the olive oil business is to consider the fact (needs citation) that Italy exports twice as much oil as it produces. Did your business work out? What happened? We bought a very nice AOC olive oil from Aix-en-Provence once.

briandear 11y ago
..the best way is really just to taste it! If you ever get the chance to go to an olive oil expo, so you can taste a bunch of oils from various producers. It's incredible the range of characteristics of oils. For example, if you taste high quality oil, you'll likely feel a slight to moderate burn in your throat from the oleocanthal. Pretty amazing stuff, olive oil.
briandear 11y ago
Our business was extremely tough because to get US distribution, it's a rather difficult process. So we were doing the distribution ourselves.. I was flying back and forth to the US and we started selling in a few shops and we went through the Whole Foods process, but the margins were extremely tight given that we were at capacity with just 5000 liters a year. So not enough money to justify the work. Our oil is/was AOC as well as organic. We also had several single-olive varietals that were unique to our region that were really popular. But, in the end, it's just a hard grind of a business. Love the oils, don't love competing with companies selling oil by the tanker truck. It was also a tough sell to the consumer because convincing the average grocery store shopper to pay almost triple the cost for a product that meets a need they don't really know they have.. that's a tough one. As a side note.. I do highly recommend California olive oils (ones that are labeled as such..) they have a rather strict certification process, so if it's in California and it's labeled as such, you're almost certainly getting the real deal. I'm definitely partial top Provençal, Corsican and Tuscan oils, but there are definitely some great ones out there.

by isolate 11y ago

briandear 11y ago

..the best way is really just to taste it! If you ever get the chance to go to an olive oil expo, so you can taste a bunch of oils from various producers. It's incredible the range of characteristics of oils. For example, if you taste high quality oil, you'll likely feel a slight to moderate burn in your throat from the oleocanthal. Pretty amazing stuff, olive oil.

briandear 11y ago

Our business was extremely tough because to get US distribution, it's a rather difficult process. So we were doing the distribution ourselves.. I was flying back and forth to the US and we started selling in a few shops and we went through the Whole Foods process, but the margins were extremely tight given that we were at capacity with just 5000 liters a year. So not enough money to justify the work. Our oil is/was AOC as well as organic. We also had several single-olive varietals that were unique to our region that were really popular. But, in the end, it's just a hard grind of a business. Love the oils, don't love competing with companies selling oil by the tanker truck. It was also a tough sell to the consumer because convincing the average grocery store shopper to pay almost triple the cost for a product that meets a need they don't really know they have.. that's a tough one. As a side note.. I do highly recommend California olive oils (ones that are labeled as such..) they have a rather strict certification process, so if it's in California and it's labeled as such, you're almost certainly getting the real deal. I'm definitely partial top Provençal, Corsican and Tuscan oils, but there are definitely some great ones out there.