What olive oil do you like?
My Guidini from california ran out and i'm sad. It was cloudy but I like the grassy flavor.
Is Costco EVOO any good?

Costco EVOO is quite good for every day use imo.

Look here...

OliveOyl

Some great stuff here. Not cheap but delicious. I've really enjoyed the Valdesano and am currently using La Cravenco. Costco stuff just "okay ".

Ranieri Gold is fine with me.

I don't care for the peppery stuff. If you like it green and fruity try the olive oil made from Mission olives from the Olive Pit in Corning, CA. I buy it by the gallon for $44 + shipping. I haven't tasted anything from anywhere that I like better.

I like a Moroccan olive oil I find at a market here. Very fruity and terrific by itself. d'Huiz or something like that. I ran out yesterday and have already thrown the bottle out, or I'd have the exact name.

Here's an interesting article from the Washington Post about Spanish olive oil:

washingtonpost.com
The Best Spanish Olive Oils for Dipping and Drizzling

Sunday, April 4, 2004; Page M09

Not long ago, I had the unlikely honor of being inducted into the Confraria de la Mare de Deu de L'Olivera, a society of Catalan olive oil producers, on a rainy evening in the church of Santa Maria del Mare in Barcelona. Never mind that I'm a displaced Texan who grew up on food fried in Crisco; I'm now a certified, medallion-wearing Spanish olive oil fanatic.

As such, it's my duty to note that with olive oil, you get what you pay for. There's no comparison between mass-produced oil and a hand-harvested, organic variety. You don't need a top-flight extra-virgin oil for everyday frying, sauteing and so on. But when you want something to go with a crusty piece of fresh peasant bread, or to swirl into a bowl of soup, good Spanish oils provide the most bang for your sensory buck.

The Spanish cultivate 262 varieties of olives for oil, but a few key choices account for most of the production: Picual, Hojiblanca, Picudo, Cornicabra and Arbequina. While most oils are blends, the dominant ones go a long way toward defining character. The following cover the main bases in terms of olive varieties and range of flavor, and they're remarkably affordable for the quality they offer.

VIBRANT AND SPICY. L'Estornell Organic is made entirely from Arbequina olives, the small, brown, glossy variety that are the pride of Catalonia. An organically produced oil, it is medium-weight, with a nutty aroma and a mildly peppery bite, superb drizzled over grilled vegetables or fish. Available for $25.99 for 750 milliliters at Sutton Place Gourmet (3201 New Mexico Ave. NW, 202-363-5800) and Dean & Deluca (3276 M St. NW, 800-925-7854, www.deandeluca.com). Another good Arbequina oil is Pons, which costs $24 for 475 milliliters at www.tienda.com -- a great resource for imported Spanish gourmet goods.

MILD AND FRESH. Rafael Salgado "RS" is made mostly from Cornicabras and Manzanillas from Andalusia. Gold and light-bodied, it has a fresh, grassy taste -- ideal for a salad with a little sherry vinegar from Jerez. $14.99 for 750 milliliters at Williams-Sonoma or Tienda.com, which also has a single-note Manzanilla oil by Aguibal ($19.95 for 500 milliliters).

RICH AND COMPLEX. From Baena, Nuñez de Prado, making oil since 1795, produces the most full-bodied of the three here. A blend of organic Picual, Picudo and Hojiblanca olives, the oil is unusual in that it's not pressed -- only that which drips by gravity from the crushed olives is used. It's richly aromatic, with a flavor that recalls apples and nuts -- great with a piece of bread. $24.99 for 500 milliliters at Dean & Deluca or www.zingermans.com, where you can also find Columela, which makes two single-note oils of either Picual or Hojiblanca olives ($21 for 500 milliliters). Ray Isle

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

My favorite isDaVero Olive Oil. It's awesome stuff.

I'm currently using a Frantoia Italian Olive Oil which is very nice, elegant, fruit and almond.

If you can find it, try...

Hacienda Fuencubierta Extra Virgin.

Great stuff, not too expensive. I believe my last bottle came from Corti Bros.

For cooking, generally, I just use Berrio EVOO, sometimes Colavita EVOO.

For salads, etc, I like L'Estournelle Organic (Spanish, available at Williams-Sonoma)

My favorite olive oil has to be San Giusto a Retananno, but it is virtually impossible to get in the U.S. unless you have connections with Marc de Grazia -- and even then it has proven really difficult.

a

While we'rd talking olive oil;
do you prefer
French
Spanish
Italian
Greek
Californian
or?

The olive oils I've liked the most are Italian and French.

A great source of top quality oil's for good prices is Rare wines of sonoma:

http://www.rarewineco.com/home.html

I agree with kpak that www.oliviersandco.com is another great source for oils. Rare wines only carries Tuscan oils, but their prices are a bit better than Oliviers, but Oliviers carries oils from all over (France, spain, italy, etc).

I'd hold off for a bit on doing any big olive oil purchases tho cuz last years crop is just about to come out. Both Rare wine and Oliviers are selling olive oils grown in 2002 (Oliviers uses the year the oil is delivered (rather than the year it was grown) in its vintage date...so Oliviers 2003 oil was grown in 2002). I'm expecting/hoping that rare wine will be sending out their new olive oil offering any day or any week now. I believe that Oliviers releases their new oil about this time of year as well.

The rare wine newsletter came out last week.

Well, I'm biased, but I'd have to say Spanish olive oils are my favourites.

I sepcifically like the oils from Baena. Very fruity and intense.

An interesting article in yesterday's NY Times concerning the rare chance that Italian-labeled olive oil is actually Italian. Entire article posted so you don't have to log-on to the website.

The Olive Oil Seems Fine. Whether It's Italian Is the Issue.
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

Published: May 7, 2004


ASSAROSA, Italy - To divine the secrets of the famously Italian olive oils that are exported from the famously Italian countryside here, it is instructive to go right to the source. Not endless olive groves lovingly tended as if they were old friends, but more typically, a charmless tanker truck bearing foreign olive oil.

Trucks hauling many tons of olive oil at a time arrive regularly at the new ultramodern factory here that bottles Filippo Berio, a popular brand in the United States that portrays itself as an old-style favorite from a land where olive oil is the national nectar.

Into the Berio containers, the ones with labels that say "Imported from Italy," goes olive oil from Spain, Greece and Tunisia. Occasionally, the oil is from Italy itself, though usually not from Lucca, the celebrated olive-growing region in Tuscany that is the factory's home.

The Italian olive oil industry has long been built on this illusion. Consumers the world over want Italian olive oil because it is supposed to be the finest, redolent of la dolce vita, and so the industry finds a way to give it to them, sort of. In truth, Italy does not grow enough olives to meet even its own demand, let alone foreigners'. Spain, not Italy, actually has the world's largest olive harvest. As a result, Italy is one of the world's leading importers of olive oil, part consumed, the rest re-exported with newly assumed Italian cachet.

The industry has a ready justification: what is important is not where the olives are picked and pressed, but where the oil is refined and blended. The olive oil is Italian, the argument goes, because it has been processed by skilled Italian experts who choose oils from around the Mediterranean to create an oil for the foreign market.

"Our object is to make our customer satisfied, regardless of where the oil comes from," said Alberto Fontana, president of Salov, whose family has exported Filippo Berio for five generations.

He said that depending on the year, as little as 20 percent of the oil in Berio might come from Italian olives. (Berio's main rival, Bertolli, which also has roots in the Lucca region, uses foreign oils, too.)

In fact, for all the history proudly described on its labels, the Berio brand is not available in Italy. Salov produces oil for the domestic market under a different name.

Nary an olive nor an oil press is visible here in the new $50 million Salov factory, Instead, as much as 100,000 tons of olive oil a year is produced with a computer-controlled array of 30-foot-high storage silos, mixing vats and assembly lines. Extra virgin olive oil, the finest grade, needs little processing, while lower categories are heavily refined. For export, the factory even churns out an extra light olive oil, a bland concoction that is about as enticing to a native Italian palate as bowl of SpaghettiOs.

Whether the Italian practice is proper depends on the interpretation of different laws in Italy, the European Union and the United States. As the producers carefully point out, if a Belgian chocolatier uses cocoa from Ivory Coast, does that mean that the chocolate is African?

To which at least some American consumers and the Spanish olive growers say, harrumph.

More than a trace of Mediterranean pride is at stake. The Spanish industry, unable to develop as robust a consumer reputation around "Imported from Spain," has long resented essentially providing the vocals for the Italians' lip-synching.

Better marketing might someday improve the image of Spanish oil, but meantime, the Spanish growers say, the Italians might improve their own packaging and advertising with a bit more frankness.

"They are just pretending that their product is Italian," said José Guerra of the New York office of the Trade Commission of Spain.

A New York lawyer named Marvin L. Frank agreed. In the late 1990's, Mr. Frank responded to the Italian business custom with an American one: he filed a class-action lawsuit against Bertolli, charging that it used deceptive packaging and advertising, including slogans like, "Born in the Tuscany Mountains."

Mr. Frank said he settled after Bertolli agreed to modify its labels. Now, fine print on the back label indicates the oil's countries of origin, even though the front label still says "Lucca" and "Imported from Italy." Bertolli's lawyer in the case would not comment on it.

Mr. Fontana of Salov said the company had recently added similar type to its back labels for exports to America and would eventually do so for other countries.

Perhaps most dissatisfied are the Italian olive growers themselves, who grumble that the Italian producers are disloyal and buy so much Spanish olive oil because it is cheap. That, insisted Nicola Ruggiero, president of Unaprol, the Italian growers association, is the only advantage of the Spanish oil.

"Their oil has a bad odor," he sniffed.

His view is not widely held by olive oil connoisseurs, who said the Spanish oils can be as outstanding - or as poor - as the Italian ones.

One effect of the dispute is that more Italian oils are prominently indicating that they are made from only Italian olives. But they are generally more expensive.

And even so, given that it is difficult to trace an oil's source, olive oil fraud is not uncommon in Italy. Giuseppe Fugaro, a senior Italian agricultural official, said he brought more than 1,000 cases of fraud last year, involving label tampering and other unsavory practices.

Asked about the legality of using foreign oil and describing the product as imported from Italy, Mr. Fugaro smiled and said there was nothing that he could do.

"It is not fraud," he said, "but it is cheating."

Interesting article .

I recently ordered Davero ( California) and they had a letter discussing ( correct me if I'm wrong cause I already threw it away) that California doesn't govern EVOO , but they expressly make EVOO, but some guy don't really make EVOO but say they do.

Yeah, interesting. All marketing, eh?

Purple, this is correct. The state of California does not regulate the Olive Oil industry (which is a bit strange, they seem to try to get their hands on everything else). There is aCalifornia Olive Oil Council which seems to be a self regulating body.