Subtitle - Spain crushes Italy

Cooks Illustrated evaluated via blind-tasting a group of best-selling "boutique" olive oils from a variety of countries priced at $20 to $56 per liter.

FWIW the results were surprising in that the highest scoring oils were from Spain.

Columela EVOO - Spain $22 for 25 oz
Nunez de Prado Organic EVOO - Spain $27.99 for 16.9 oz
Terra Medi EVOO - Greece $9.95 for 17 oz.

In the supermarket oils they recommend DaVinci at $12.99 per liter. When they tasted this oil with the boutique oils it finished last.

There are a lot of Italian markets around here with a good selection of boutique Italian olive oils that you can taste before you buy. Spanish oils are a lot harder to find. My local wine shop, though, has Nunez de Prada. Its only $17.50 for a liter, too, so I might give that a try.

Note that according to the laws the olive oil only has to be bottled in Italy to be considered an "Italian" olive oil (IIRC). Thus lots of Italian olive oil a really from Spain.

They mentioned that in the article. An interesting fact.

In the same issue they also preferred box wine for cooking. There are so many brands of olive oil, why did they select the ones they did. I find there tasting methods very flawed and always wonder about them. Equipment tests and technique evaluations are one thing but food taste tests are always a little suspect.

Again this was a FWIW - I think their tasting methods are OK but their sample sizes leave something to be desired. It's like the Wall Street Journal wine revieweres that go out and buy wines from local stores to taste. It's clear that their local selections and other locations vary quite widely.

Maybe I have missed it somewhere in the magazine, but who is on their tasting panel. How large a sample is there tasting panel and what is their background.

Just as a side note, we always have a number of artisan Italian and Spanish EVOOs on hand as well as a couple of French and Greek. Occasionally Californian and Moroccan

I am with Landshark 100% on this. Love their articles on equipment and cooking techniques. But I find their taste tests to be way off the mark for me. The panelists tend to be too "New England Stodgy" for me, and oftentimes the things they look for are actually things that don't interest me in th least.

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The panelists tend to be too "New England Stodgy" for me

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All you have to do is look at the picture of the editor to tell that. He's a bow tie kind of guy.

Bingo! Hard to take him seriously when it comes to "cutting edge" cuisine. I can just picture this guy running down the hall yelling: "Hey! Has anyone heard about this new contraption called a "Food Processor"?

Traveling around Spain by plane and train the past 2 weeks, I can say olives are the main crop. You see entire valleys, horizon to horizon covered by olive trees.

It would be a bigger surprise if Spain didn't produce great olive oil.

Don't know what issue you are referring to: my latest issue has a comparison of Italian oils only. And green bean casserole...
I am getting tired of Cook's Illustrated claiming to be advert free but stuffed full of their own promotionals... I have to rip all that SH*&(* out before I can read the magazine.

spain is the worlds largest olive oil producers

"In Spain, 10% of total cultivated land is planted with olive trees. This is 215 million trees, spread over 5.3 million acres. Spain produces about 45% of the world's production, Italy 25%, Greece 20%. California is responsible for ½ of 1% - with Australia and South America less. Next to Spain, Turkey is the largest olive producing country in the world. It is estimated that Turkey has 90,000,000 olive trees. "
some Olive Oil Trivia fromThe Olive Oil Company