At The Savory Pantry, we want you to be confident when you buy olive oil, knowing that what you see is what you get. We take pride in our personal connections with the makers and growers of the products that fill our pantry, and it thrills us to be able to pass assurances of quality and taste along to our customers.

The Savory Pantry delves deep into the olive oil market, ensuring that our Italian oils and other EVOO's from around the world are authentic and of the highest quality. Understanding the difference and recognizing genuine Italian extra virgin olive oils can significantly elevate your culinary experiences, ensuring you enjoy only the best EVOO oil available. The Savory Pantry brings you a world of olive oil each year, updating our selection annually to include the very best on the market. This year's selection includes oils from Italy, Spain, France, Morrocco, Croatia, Argentina and California.

A Centuries-Old Legacy of Olive Oils

For centuries, oil obtained from the fruit of the olive tree – olive oil – has been relied upon for cooking, eating, good health, and beauty. It is ever popular for its culinary worth as well as its plentiful, documented health benefits. Olive oil production is an expansive industry as well as a work of art. The perfect olive oil requires precise skills and abundant knowledge to create.

Making the Grade: Understanding EVOO

The methods (and quality of those methods) at each step of the process determine the ultimate quality, known as the grade. The highest grade is extra virgin olive oil (colloquially, evoo oil or evoo). "Pure" is a lower grade than extra virgin. Confused about choosing the best olive oil? You aren't alone; the olive oil on many grocery store shelves is not good quality. However, since it is what consumers have been consistently exposed to, it has taught them to prefer oils that are rancid, musty, and even winey in flavor. However, at The Savory Pantry, we guide you through the grades, from 'pure' to the highest grade - extra virgin olive oil (EVOO). Learning the nuances between these can help you make informed decisions when you decide to buy olive oil, ensuring you choose quality and taste.

Desired Flavor and Preservation of EVOO

High quality olive oils, like those in our selection, have the desired characteristics of a mixture of fruity, bitter, and pungent. This flavor is achieved is by minimizing the time between harvesting and processing (ideally fewer than 12 hours!). Like fresh fruit juice, the shorter the time, the better the quality, taste, and nutrients preserved. Kept at room temperature in a darkened cupboard, quality oil will keep for about 2 years. (Of course as delicious as our oils are, we doubt you'll be storing them a fraction of that time!). Our collection of EVOO oil preserves these desired flavors, ensuring every bottle you buy is a testament to the finest olive oils, kept at ideal conditions to maintain taste and nutrients. When you are shopping, be sure to look for the harvest date on the bottle.

Seal:

California is a major producer for olive oil in the U.S. and many of the finer oils from Cali bear the California Olive Oil Council's (COOC) seal. This doesn't mean oils lacking the seal aren't as good or even better; when the seal is absent, look for the harvest date. Many smaller producers find getting a seal from the COOC too costly.

Origin:

Labeling may not tell the whole story of where an oil comes from. You may find a bottle of extra virgin olive oil that is packaged in Italy, but the oil itself is from Turkey, Greece, Spain, Tunisia, and other parts of the Mediterranean. This is probably not the freshest oil, but you won't know until you taste it and smell it—likely after purchase.

Aroma and Taste:

High quality, fresh olive oil should have an artichoke or green, earthy aroma. Unpleasant odors akin to old peanut butter indicate that the oil is rancid. Fine olive oil should be slightly fruity, and a little bitter with a peppery finish. The degrees of these flavors will differ, but in general these are the gustatory traits of high quality olive oil.

Why Buy Extra Virgin Olive Oil from The Savory Pantry?

The olive oils in The Savory Pantry are some of the finest you will find, carefully selected for their unparalleled quality and freshness. Our artisan olive oils are small batch produced and many are estate bottled, so you know you are getting some of the top-quality and tastiest oil available anywhere.

Explore our selection of the finest extra virgin olive oils and discover why The Savory Pantry is your go-to destination to buy olive oil online. Experience the rich, nuanced flavors of artisanal EVOO oil in every dish, and join us in celebrating the vibrant legacy of Italian olive oils that has extended around the world. Your journey to discovering the ultimate culinary treasure starts here.