How to recognize a real extra virgin olive oil?

Excellence of Mediterranean cuisine , famous throughout the world for its fine quality and its nutrients that make it the condiment par excellence to bring to our tables.

We are talking about 100% Italian extra virgin olive oil . How to recognize a real extra virgin olive oil?

Despite being protected by the DOP regulations that ensure that the product and producers act in compliance with the regulations, we occasionally witness some scams related to extra virgin olive oil . These occur when a non-EVO oil is passed off as such, as often happens when a community oil (therefore produced in the EU - not in Italy), is sold as Italian on the shelves of our supermarkets, even though it is not a 100% Made in Italy product .

How to defend yourself from all this? In this article we want to help you recognize a good extra virgin olive oil, allowing you to distinguish a real EVO oil from a bad copy. Therefore respect what is one of the excellences of the agricultural companies of our peninsula.

The price helps us recognize a good extra virgin olive oil

The first alarm bell that should ring in our heads when we are about to buy a new bottle of oil to season our dishes is undoubtedly the price. It is practically impossible to find a good EVO oil at €3 a bottle, there are no ifs or buts.

Good extra virgin olive oil has a price, the right price but it has a price. If your desire is to buy an oil for less than €8 per liter, know that most likely it is either not a 100% Italian product, or it is not produced in a sustainable way by Italian farmers.

Of course, there are exceptions that prove the rule.

Let's read the label carefully

To know how to recognize a real extra virgin olive oil, we can rely on the Italian (and European) regulations that establish that for this type of product, and for food products in general, companies are required to include the so-called "talking label" . This means that they must report where and when it was produced, as well as the nutritional values, batch number and expiration date.

Often behind big Italian brands, there are small writings that indicate “blend of oils of community origin”.

Once you have made sure that the oil is 100% Italian like our Angelino oil, it must respect some simple characteristics:

• It was produced in Italy.
• It was obtained from Olives Cultivated, harvested and pressed in Italy. This is because the place where the olive was cultivated and processed (or sometimes the production area) translates into a set of characteristics common to the oil of that area. An example is our Salento oil .
• it is a sweet oil.
• it is balanced, with a strong but not aggressive fruitiness.