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Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

What's the cheapest way to get guaranteed-real EV olive oil? Are there known-good brands (perhaps ones produced entirely outside of Italy?)

Or, if you cared about "authentic Italian" olive oil, perhaps for personal or restaurant use (i.e. not for resale): how much would it cost (in the US) to just buy bulk Italian olives, and then press them yourself?

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I buy Greek olive oil. I didn't do any serious research, but it tastes much better than Italian or Spanish counterparts bought locally. I've been to Greece and what I tasted there, wasn't much different from what I buy back home, so I suppose it's a real deal.

EDIT: I live in Europe, so it might be different in USA.

Greece grows a lot of olives, but lacks the infrastructure to process and bottle it into oil (on a large scale)[1]. They end up selling much of it to Italy. Maybe Italy uses different techniques than Greece does? I've tried to check the bottles of Italian olive oil and have had a hard time figuring out where exactly the olives were sourced.

[1] http://www.npr.org/2015/07/16/423605233/greeces-lost-olive-o...

I know this is crazy, but you can taste it :-) Of course, most people don't know what olive oil should taste like, but it really has a wide flavour range. Buy a selection of small bottles and simply taste them (possibly with some nice bread and a little salt if you don't like drinking oil straight up).

I highly recommend trying olive oil from other countries as well. It's really an eye opener. Once you get some experience it's pretty easy to spot good olive oil. It's a bit like beer. Some people love American lite beer (and more power to them), but if you compare an all malt lager with a single variety noble hop to a light beer with 30% rice/corn and a mishmash of 8 nondescript hops (or isomerised hop extract) it doesn't require a discerning palette to detect the difference.

Interestingly, I have been wondering for about 10 years now about how ridiculously cheap balsamic vinegar has shown up in the super market. Buy a bottle of 30 year old balsamico and compare it to the cheap stuff and I suspect you will wonder (like me), "Is this really balsamic vinegar???"

Yeah it's like going to Greece and eat a ripe cucumber. Even in italy they sell watery, acidic stuff that would never comare to the real thing. I've never eaten one again anywhere else in the world.

To be fair, most contries have good cucumbers, if you buy them in season. The last part is the important part.

It isn't. It's a sugary contraption that makes your salad sweet and brownish, which is attractive to the eye.

Try spanish olive oil. I'm spanish, so I probably have a bias. You can have pretty decent olive oil for less than 4 euros / litre here so olive oil is the only oil I use.

If you buy oil bottled in Spain look for the "extra virgin olive oil" label: Aceite de oliva virgen extra. We are pretty serious with labeling around here, so you won't be fooled.

There are varieties like picual, hojiblanca, arbequina or cornicabra which are different in color and taste, and are named after the olives they are made from.

4 euros per liter is crazy. In the US, even the cheapest crappy olive oil is $20/liter

In Spain 20 euros buys you a liter of the best specialty extra virgin olive oil. This is why good olive oil poured over a toast covered with pureed tomatoes is such a popular breakfast.

Trader Joe's has it for $6.99-9.99, though after reading this article, I'd like to hear some confirmation on its quality.

Check out Costco. Their brand is not only cheap, but one of the few that are real. The price went up since 2010, but it is still around $10/l.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/5-things-you-should-buy-at-costc...

The articles I've read (your's included) explicitly pointed out Costco's Organic olive oil. Costco also sells a non-Organic version that's cheaper but I haven't seen anyone say either way if it's actually EVOO.

FWIW, having bought a bottle of the non-organic EVOO at Costco today, I can say it is labeled as if it is real.

In the U.S., Californian olive oils are your best bet. Otherwise, Costco Kirkland Signature olive oil (which is now Greek oil [1]) is another good choice.

Outside of Italy, it's difficult to find Italian olive oils that are not blended. The 2014 and 2015 harvest seasons have been terrible due a bacterial blight [2] that crippled many olive farms in Southern Italy.

[1] http://www.seattletimes.com/business/retail/costco-embraces-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylella_fastidiosa

Get local oil.

I know that here in New Zealand, NZ produced olive oil is actually made from olives. I could even drive up to the olive farm (plantation? orchard?) and have a look myself to make sure.

So I guess getting New Zealand oil would work in the USA as well, if you could find any. It's a bit of a cottage industry here, so I don't think much makes its way overseas.

Go Spanish, they are usually cheaper as they aren't as famous as the Italian, but the quality is the same or even better, as they don't have the strange shenanigans the Italians have with the Mafia. An awful lot of the Italian oil sold outside of Italy is from Spain, anyway [1].

[1]http://www.economist.com/news/business/21600996-government-f....

Get a locally produced oil marked extra virgin. My family produces EVOO in small batches and the difference betwee imported and fresh is marked.

Nobody would ever need specialised equipment to tell them apart, it would be like eating butter instead of margarine.

Try Australian olive oil. There was a tax scam some years ago here which resulted in stacks of olive oil plantations, so now australian olive oil should be a good price over there I'd imagine.

If you're in California, try the olive oil (I prefer the italian style) from Ranch Olivos, literally grown in Los Olivos :) Amazing, product, and if you go there yourself you can buy it from the owner, standing under a canopy on his ranch, next to the olive trees. http://www.ranchoolivos.com

https://www.cooc.com

Costco?

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