I've always been satisfied with my grocery-bought olive oil, but also curious as to what "good" olive oil actually tastes like. Is there a brand or vendor in the US that sells such a product?
Unless you buy it in small quantities and use it quickly after opening the bottle (within a week), it's rancid though.
Since it's PDO, it's guaranteed to be a single cultivation, and from a region that takes its quality seriously.
There are plenty of great niche/imported brands as well, but it's pretty random as to which store might carry which ones, if any.
IIRC they're no longer certified by the COOC. Given the massive amount of fraud in the olive oil industry, independent verification seems like the only tool to do that.
But even if you want to go by the seat of your pants, it seems like a bad idea to trust a company named "California Olive Ranch" whose growth into a nationally known label depends on importing olive oil from outside California.
California grows olives just fine, so I always use California oil. Now, is California Olive Ranch cheating some cheap import oil into their native EVOO? They could be; I’m betting not. My bet is that their own interests are best served by being straight here — one credible allegation of adulterating oil and their reputation takes a huge hit. Meanwhile, they can continue to charge lots of money for a high-quality product, which is just as it should be.
A couple of references to back my claim
https://www.thedailymeal.com/1157209/what-sets-costco-extra-...
https://www.countryliving.com/food-drinks/a44246/best-olive-...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/costco-olive-oil_n_5981e0abe4...
- Picual - strong, bitter and spicy, very grassy, also one of the most common single-variety Spanish olive oils. Perfect for cooking meat, or mixing/marinating.
- Arbequina - not as strong, less spicy, with sweet, exotic fruity/grassy flavors. Awesome for making mayonnaise or ali-oli.
- Hojiblanca - somewhat middle-of-the-road, with moderate spice and bitterness, great for salads!
- Cornicabra - strength varies a lot, also spicy if harvested earlier, very sweet if harvested later. Great all-around. Tasty for cooking and for salads.
There are others, but these are the main ones. Early/late harvesting plays a significant role on taste, earlier being more bitter. In general, I love the very greenish-colored cornicabra olive oil, which are full of early harvest chlorophylls, and that are not too spicy.
Unfortunately, most non-Mediterranean (USA, UK...) grocery store extra virgin olive oils may not print the olive variety or is a blend oil produced and marketed for export...
The top recommendation is there, among other reasons, for that taste:
>This oil starts with a slight caramel flavor, but a bitter pungency blooms followed by a pleasant piquancy. We all enjoyed its grassy flavor, which one panelist said gave her “summer vegetable garden vibes.” The oil was rich but not overly fatty. One tester observed, “The way my tongue is responding reminds me of a good matcha—there’s that astringency, and then a long finish.”
If someone wants to call olive oil without grass-clippings-taste "rancid," it's a free country, but that term comes with overbearing negative connotations so I'd personally prefer "aged" or something.
There's an initial flavor that can be idiosyncratic to where the olives were grown-- to me it's quite a bit more savory and subtle than the same kinds of flavors we associate with wines, but it's usually there.
Then there's kind of aftertaste with a slightly "spicy" burn-- if tasting a small spoonful it can sometimes make people cough.
I actually hesitate to write this as a metric lest some flavor tech in New Jersey reverse engineer it as a target for flavor additives to conola oil or some such.
Other than the California brand others have mentioned, I haven’t found anything of similar quality in a supermarket, including Whole Foods and other high end markets.