How to Taste Olive Oil at Home: The Cupped Glass, the Slurp, the Cough and What to Write Down
Most people have never tasted olive oil. They have eaten it, on bread, in a dressing, under a piece of fish, but they have never put a spoonful in their mouth on its own and paid attention, and so a great deal of what they think about oil comes from the label. The trained panels that decide whether an oil qualifies as extra virgin use a method our judging piece describes: a blue glass so color cannot bias them, a warm hand, a slurp that pulls air across the oil, and a fixed vocabulary. Every step of it works at a kitchen table with a coffee cup. Ten minutes with two bottles teaches more than a year of pouring from one, and after it you will read an olive oil label differently for the rest of your life.
What you need
Two or three oils, ideally different in style: a robust green one and a milder golden one, or two from different regions. Small cups with no handle, coffee cups or small bowls, one per oil, dark if you have them so the color is hidden. A glass of water and a plate of plain green apple slices or plain bread to reset the palate. A pencil. Room temperature; oil straight from a cold cupboard smells of less.
The method
- Pour a tablespoon into each cup. Cover the cup with your other hand and cup it in your palm for a minute. You are warming the oil to about body temperature, which releases the aromatic compounds; the pros use a heated tray, and a hand does the same job.
- Uncover and smell, nose right at the rim, three short sniffs. Do not analyze yet; notice the first thing that comes to mind, and write it down. Grass. Artichoke. Tomato leaf. Apple. Almond. Butter. Then smell again and look for a second and third.
- Sip a small amount, about a teaspoon, and hold it on your tongue. Then close your teeth, part your lips, and draw air in sharply across the oil with a slurp, the way you would cool hot soup. The sound is undignified and the effect is the point: it sprays the oil across the whole palate and up into the nasal passage, where most of what we call taste actually happens, and it pushes the oil to the back of the throat.
- Swallow, and count the cough. A good fresh oil catches at the back of the throat, a peppery burn that may make you cough once or twice. That is pungency, and it is a virtue, not a flaw; it comes from a polyphenol called oleocanthal that is one of the reasons olive oil is thought to be good for you. One cough is a gentle oil; two is a robust one; none is either a very delicate style or a tired oil.
- Write three things: what it smelled like, how bitter it was on the tongue, how peppery in the throat. Rinse with water, eat a slice of apple, wait a minute, next cup.
The three positives
The official scale scores oils on three virtues, and they are easy to find once named. Fruitiness is the aroma and taste of the olive itself, and it splits into green fruitiness, from early-picked olives, which reads as grass, artichoke, tomato leaf, green banana and herbs, and ripe fruitiness, from later picking, which reads as apple, butter, almond, tropical fruit. Bitterness is on the tongue, especially the back and sides, and it is the taste of polyphenols; robust Tuscan and Puglian oils are bitter on purpose, and a complete absence of bitterness suggests an oil past its best. Pungency is the throat, as above. A balanced oil has all three in proportion to its style: a delicate oil is lightly fruity, barely bitter and gently peppery; a robust one is intensely green, clearly bitter and makes you cough. Neither is better. They are for different food, which the buying guide lays out.
The faults you can catch without training
Panels are trained to detect a long list of defects at tiny concentrations. Four of them are obvious enough that an attentive beginner will notice.
Rancid. The most common fault in home kitchens, and the one to learn first. Rancid oil smells of old nuts, crayons, putty or stale walnuts, and tastes flat and waxy with an unpleasant aftertaste. It is what happens to oil exposed to light, heat and air for too long, and it is what most supermarket oil smells like by the time it is opened. Once you know the smell you will never un-know it. Our mill piece explains why harvest date matters more than best-by.
Fusty or musty. A smell of damp basement, wet cardboard, or fermented olives, from fruit that sat in piles or was moldy before milling. Sour and heavy.
Winey or vinegary. A sharp, sour, almost alcoholic edge, from olives that fermented. Distinct from the clean bitterness of a good oil.
Flat. Not officially a fault, but the practical one: an oil with no aroma, no bitterness and no cough is not extra virgin in any meaningful sense, whatever the label claims, and it is usually old, refined, or both.
A vocabulary of twenty words
Green fruit: grass, artichoke, tomato leaf, green almond, herbs, green banana. Ripe fruit: apple, butter, ripe almond, tropical, floral. Structure: bitter, peppery, pungent, balanced, delicate, robust. Faults: rancid, musty, winey, flat. That is enough to describe any oil you will meet and to read a tasting note on a label with understanding.
The two-bottle tasting to start with
Pour a robust oil and a delicate one side by side. Score each from one to five on green fruit, ripe fruit, bitterness and pungency, and write one aroma word. The robust oil should score high on green, bitterness and pungency; the delicate one higher on ripe fruit and low on the rest. Then taste each on a piece of plain bread, and then on a slice of tomato with salt. Most people find the robust oil wins on the tomato and the delicate one wins on the bread, and that ten-minute discovery is the whole reason to own two bottles. Once a year, taste your open bottle against a fresh one of the same kind; the day you can smell the difference is the day you understand why the buying guide says buy small and buy this year's.
Tasting with food, and the Denver note
The professional tasting is on its own, but the oil's job is on food, so finish by tasting each oil the way you will use it: over warm beans, on a piece of grilled bread, beside a tin of sardines from the tinned fish shelf. Robust oils that seem harsh alone are right on a rich dish; delicate oils that seem shy alone are right on a piece of white fish. At Denver's altitude the oil is unaffected, but the dry air and the strong light through a kitchen window age an open bottle faster; the altitude guide says cupboard, not counter, and the tasting will show you why within a season. The oils are at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com. A pair of cups and a green apple are the whole kit.
