5 Ways To Tell If Your Extra Virgin Olive Oil Is The Real Deal

Olive oil might be one of those kitchen staples that you rarely think about beyond when it's time to buy more. But for many years, there was a rumor that international crime rings were producing tons of fake olive oil. However, the estimate that as much as 65%-80% of the extra virgin olive oil sold in America is fake has been largely disproven. That being said, it's still easy to purchase a bottle of olive oil thinking that it's extra virgin olive oil only to see that it's been diluted with less expensive oils. 

A few compounding factors make extra virgin olive oil a popular item to mess with, the first of which is price. Unfortunately, due to climate change, olive supply has been dwindling across Europe, resulting in olive oil production shortages and leading to big price increases. Shortcuts flourish when demand heavily outpaces price, and some misguided extra virgin olive oil entrepreneurs have definitely found creative ways around selling the gold standard of the golden liquid. With all that in mind, we wanted to share some extra virgin olive oil shopping tips to make sure you don't purchase an inferior bottle by accident.

Like with any food product, the keys to the kingdom — or in this case, authenticity — live on the label. Of course, labels won't explicitly tell you whether the olive oil is real or a watered down version, but there are a few indicators of legitimacy to look out for. One thing that higher-end extra virgin olive oils include on the label is the harvest date. This is not to be confused with the "best by" or "bottled on" dates, which don't tell you much about the harvesting, pressing, or packaging process. Sometimes, the harvest date is listed as the "pressed on" date, but both refer to the same thing: the day that the olives went from squishy little ovals to golden, buttery liquid.

Another big thing to look out for is the estate name. Bottles that take the time to showcase the estate or mill from which the olives were harvested display a level of confidence, authenticity, and accountability. It's also worth taking into consideration the regulations in place for different countries. For instance, if you spot a bottle made in Australia, it's worth considering for purchase; this is because Australia has enacted rigorous standards when it comes to extra virgin olive oil in order to limit customer confusion.

Similar to labeling, packaging can be faked to look nicer than what's inside the actual bottle. That being said, there is one thing that premium extra virgin olive oil producers do to make sure that the olive oil is set up for success while it sits in your pantry (and not next to your stove, hopefully).

You may have noticed that extra virgin olive oil comes in different types of bottles, from dark plastic to clear glass to recyclable tins. Ultimately, bottle design is important when it comes to avoiding degradation and oxidation. When extra virgin olive oil is exposed to U.V. radiation (i.e. sunlight), the chlorophyll begins to break down. Additionally, over-exposure can lead to fatty acid oxidation, which changes the taste of your extra virgin olive oil and shortens its shelf life. So in short, the best extra olive oil manufacturers will go through added measures to make the bottle with dark glass to help preserve the olive oil inside. Clear glass bottles aren't an automatic red flag for fake extra virgin olive oil, but they do require closer label inspection. Give this piece a read for more tips on how to tell if your olive oil has gone bad.

Out of all of our advice, this one is the most obvious but not necessarily something you've considered without knowing how prevalent inferior olive oil is. Some bottles may try to get away with creative terminology, like "pure olive oil" or "extra light olive oil." While these words have a positive connotation and convey a light, airy breeze of the Mediterranean, they're still not really describing what's in the bottle, which is most likely not extra virgin olive oil. The title "extra virgin" is technically only given out by the International Olive Council (IOC), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), or whichever governing body has this power where the olive oil is made, but these regulations can be circumvented.

The reason most kitchens have at least one if not two bottles of extra virgin olive oil is because it's considered to be a refined olive oil, aka the highest quality grade of olive oil out there. Extra virgin olive oil is made by cold pressing olives and extracting their lovely golden juices. Cold pressing is done without using heat or chemicals, so you get the purest extraction from the olives. This cold press process ensures that oil isn't stripped of its antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals, which results in a more flavorful, healthier oil.

Extra virgin olive oil goes through a pretty lengthy and intense third-party certification process. In order to be officially certified as extra virgin olive oil, the oil is put through rigorous testing, which involves chemical and sensory analysis. During the chemical analysis, olive oil producers will submit a sample of olive oil to a third-party lab to evaluate 30+ parameters that validate quality, purity, and authenticity. The sensory analysis deals more with the aroma and flavor of the actual olive oil to evaluate its quality.

As you can imagine, the third-party sensory panel is not just made up of a group of people with functioning taste buds but rather experts who are organoleptically trained to pick out subtle tasting notes. If you have never heard the word organoleptically before, don't worry, you're in good company — it's just a fancy, scientific way of saying that they're able to suss out the taste, color, odor, and feel, of certain ingredients. Any extra virgin olive oil that passes these certification tests will be eligible to receive official seals through the third-party organizations that conducted the tests.

For extra virgin olive oils produced outside of the United States, look out for the International Olive Council seal. For extra virgin olive oil produced in America, look out for the seal of the California Olive Oil Council. Both of these organizations are the gold standard of testing and certification.

Although the average consumer might not be organoleptically trained, we can still often taste when something is off. Being educated on how extra virgin olive oil should taste will help you determine if the brand you buy is legitimate. Like with wines, extra virgin olive oil can come in a range of flavors — however, there are a few key characteristics to look out for: fruitiness, bitterness, and pungency.

People often describe their extra virgin olive oil as tasting grassy, green, or fresh — these are the fruity properties. As for bitterness, this should be the same type of bitter flavor you get from coffee or dark chocolate; detectable but not overwhelming. Having a little bit of bite to your olive oil indicates that fresh olives were used for cold pressing. Finally, pungency gives olive oil a somewhat peppery quality. If you feel a slight itch or tickle at the back of your throat after eating a food, that's pungency. These three positive attributes are what the third-party certifiers are looking for in olive oil, but they're also checking to make sure there aren't any negative attributes either. If you taste test your extra virgin olive oil, you want to make sure you don't sense any of the these negative attributes, and for more taste-test direction, the IOC has a list of six fusty or muddy, musty, winey-vinegary, acid-sour, rancid, or frost-bitten olives that give off a "wet wood" taste.