If you happen to visit a wine growing region try instead to go olive oil tasting. Typically the two go together and I find different olive oils much more interesting. In addition if you bring back 2 or 3 good bottles of oil they will last much longer than 2-3 bottles of wine.
Is there a taste/test that someone like me, who is a neophyte and definitely not an expert, could distinguish/use?
If you're buying in a supermarket, you are almost always buying oil blends from multiple countries. Read the back of the label where a guide tells you where the oil came from; if you're lucky you can find one bottle that only came from one country. If at all possible, check the websites of the different options and see what production methods they use. Go with either first cold pressed (no added heat, pressed with mats to extract oil) or 2-centrifuge process.
If you're buying in an oil and vinegar tasting room, sample everything and go with what tastes best to you, because that's mostly the purpose of buying EVOO (in addition to the nutritional benefits of well produced EVOO). Ask the seller more questions and you will probably find that almost all the oils there are centrifuge-made, and they'll have maybe one bottle of mat-pressed oil in the back that's more expensive, and probably tastes drastically different than the rest.
You basically want to buy an expensive EVOO, and a cheap olive oil; the difference being that you would use regular olive oil for cooking, and EVOO for flavoring.
When I tasted it I thought it was unreal. It was that good.
I don't remember the restaurant or even where it was, but do remember the tasting experience!
For those people who may be having trouble understanding the comparison, this reaction would be the same reaction as if we were tasting supermarket hummus and legitimately homemade hummus.
One is McDonalds dry; the other is Michelin star silk.
Another example: supermarket guacamole (that green weird-tasting paste) vs. guacamole from real avocados freshly made.
In the EU, the only requirement for being legally allowed to call something "guacamole" is that it contains avocado as an ingredient. In practice, that is usually a few percentages of avocado powder.
My grandparents would pick olives and press them. We would toast big loaves of bread on the coals and drench them in this fresh oil. It tastes totally different to what you can buy in the store (at least what I have had), or even how it tastes a week later. The peppery and acidic notes are surprisingly prominent, giving it a savoury quality that is very moreish. The texture is also quite different, it is thick and rich and heavy, but not greasy at all. It is kind of magic.
Weirdly enough that reminds me of colostrum, or first milk: