Have an olive oil tasting

“When it came time to tasting I was most looking forward to this said burning I would experience in my throat. To my surprise once the olive oil reached my throat I coughed a little due to the strength of the olive oil. At the end I realized that I liked the milder tasting olive oil over the stronger one. We then learned that people in Spain preferred the stronger olive oil compared to the milder one that many Americans prefer.”

“I’ve been to a few wine tasting courses but never tasted olive oil in any serious way before. To some extent it is similar: there’s a certain vocabulary to learn and the more you practise – especially sharing with others – the easier it becomes. While with wine you learn to identify smells and tastes like oak and dark fruits, whether the wine has much tannin or acidity, with olive oil you find you are looking for a balance of fruitiness, pepperiness and bitterness. With Charles’s help we started to recognise smells and tastes of artichoke, tomato, grass, green almonds and citrus.”

“It was with no small amount of trepidation that I approached the olive oil tasting at Montestigliano [...] As the oils were poured you got your first sense of what they were all about. The scents were alluring as the oils trickled into their labeled cups. [...] We warmed our little cups. We ate a slice of apple. We sniffed. We tasted. We gargled while breathing, a trick not for amateurs. One oil stood out. The aroma in itself was enough to sent you into a state of oil-induced bliss.”