From Grove to Bottle

Most people learn to use olive oil before they ever learn to taste it. It goes in the pan, over the salad, into the cake. Functional. Background. But high-quality extra virgin olive oil has as much aromatic complexity as wine or coffee. If you never pause to taste it on its own, you miss what you’re actually paying for.

The phrase cold-pressed appears on countless olive oil bottles, usually as a shorthand for quality or natural production. But it’s rarely explained clearly, and often misunderstood. In reality, cold-pressed isn’t about nostalgia or tradition - it’s about temperature, timing, and care. Understanding what the term really means helps separate oils that prioritise freshness from those that simply use the language of quality.

Here’s an uncomfortable truth: most olive oil on supermarket shelves is already past its best. Not unsafe. Just tired.