Kelley Herring
Healing Gourmet
Do You Make These Mistakes When You Buy Olive Oil?
(The best tips we ever learned… PLUS: The oil we like best for flavor, freshness, and nutrition)
Mistake #1: Buying stale olive oil “off the shelf.” Unlike wine, olive oil does not get better with age. Like milk, eggs and meat, olive oil is perishable. The olive is, after all, a fruit. And similar to other fruit juices, olive oil is best enjoyed fresh-squeezed. That’s when you experience the peak of freshness, flavor, and nutritional potency.
Our recommendation: Avoid buying olive oil in stores, where the oils can sit on the shelf for months, growing stale, musty, and eventually rancid. We prefer buying online, where you can secure outrageously delicious olive oils fresh from the latest harvest. That’s when olive oil is bursting with just-plucked-from-the-tree flavor and goodness. Try just one bottle of fresh-pressed olive oil from
a good source, and you’ll likely never go back to store-bought.
Below we name our favorite online source of harvest-fresh olive oil. As an introduction, they even agreed to send Healing Gourmet readers a bottle of their finest artisanal olive oil (normally $39) from the latest harvest -- for just $1.
It’s quite a generous offer. If you’re interested, claim your bottle here.
Mistake #2: Unwittingly buying olive oil made by the Mafia. In recent years, many of America’s most respected media, including Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, CBS News and scores of others have reported the appalling news that many olive oils in the US are cheap counterfeits made by the Mafia.
For example, 60 Minutes ran an exposé showing how the Mafia has infiltrated the olive oil business, adulterating olive oil with much cheaper ingredients, such as nut and seed oils, to make obscene profits when they sell it as “extra virgin” (the highest grade).
According to 60 Minutes, you now face a “sea of fakes” when you shop for olive oil. And this is a serious concern, because when criminals make olive oil, they couldn't care less about your health.
In his New York Times best-selling book, Extra Virginity, journalist and olive oil expert Tom Mueller warns of contaminants and even cancer-causing agents in fake olive oils:
“Italian investigators have found hydrocarbon residues, pesticides, and other contaminants in fake oils, and pomace oil, a common adulterant, sometimes contains mineral oil as well as PAHs, proven carcinogens that can also damage DNA and the immune system.
Then there’s the 1981 case of toxic oil syndrome in Spain, when rapeseed oil adulterated with an industrial additive, sold as olive oil, killed eight hundred people and seriously injured thousands more.”
Our recommendation: You never want to feed your family fake olive oil made by the Mafia. But how can you avoid it? We recommend buying from a supplier who goes the extra mile and has all their oils independently lab certified to be 100% pure extra virgin. The source we recommend below is one such conscientious provider.
Mistake #3: Assuming that all olive oils taste alike. If you’ve always bought your olive oil in a supermarket, odds are you’ve never experienced the extraordinary diversity of flavors among the finest artisanal oils.
Ordinary mass-market olive oils sell in such high volume, they must combine inferior olives from many farms and different growing regions, with little regard for flavor. This typically results in a dull, lifeless flavor profile.
In contrast, award-winning artisans create their oils from olives grown on small, boutique farms. These dedicated masters strive for flavor perfection from each different type of olive. This makes their award-winning creations as rich, complex, and distinctive as the finest wines.
For example, some olive varietals possess a bright, spicy flavor. These bold oils pair well with a hearty seared steak or grilled lamb. In contrast, other oils are pressed from olives that yield softer, more delicate flavors. These will perfectly complement -- without overpowering -- delicate baked halibut. Other olives yield a greener oil that is more herbaceous and is just right over salad greens and
veggies.
Discovering and enjoying these amazing differences in fine olive oils is not only fun, but as any master chef will tell you, it’s one of the great secrets of elevating your favorite dishes to new heights of flavor and satisfaction.
Our recommendation: The moment you twist the cap off one of these outstanding just-pressed oils and inhale its harvest-fresh bouquet, you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about. In fact, now you can do it with one of the most divine artisanal olive oils we’ve ever tasted. It’s from the source we recommend below.
So Who Is Our Favorite Source of the World’s Best Olive Oils?
Meet Our Personal “Olive Oil Hunter,” T. J. Robinson...
A one-time chef and gourmet food writer, T. J. came up with the idea of hunting for the world’s best, freshest artisanal extra virgin olive oils (EVOO) -- and flying them directly to the kitchens of America’s top gourmet chefs and passionate food lovers straight from the new harvest at their peak of flavor.
He does this through his fast-growing Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club.
Joining the Club gives you direct access to the purest, freshest, and most flavorful olive oils from a wide array of gold-medal-winning producers. These olive oils are personally hand-selected by T. J. Robinson, exclusively for his Club members and are available nowhere else on earth. They are out-of-this-world delicious!
And, as we mentioned, when you join, there’s no commitment to buy anything else.
With T. J. as your personal “Olive Oil Hunter,” you’ll never again have to worry about unwittingly buying olive oil counterfeited by the Mafia, using fake and potentially harmful chemical additives. That’s because every olive oil T. J. imports is independently certified in two ways to be 100% pure extra virgin.
- Each oil is chemically tested by an accredited third-party laboratory and certified to be 100% pure extra virgin.
- Each oil is also certified by an independent tasting panel of human judges, formally trained and accredited to detect even the slightest defects in an olive oil’s taste or aroma.
You’ll know that these oils have been certified by a panel of the world’s fussiest professional judges to surpass every strict requirement on their list to pronounce it 100% pure extra virgin -- the highest grade.
Our First Taste Blew Us Away
When he heard about Healing Gourmet, T. J. sent us three of his new oils, fresh from the harvest, for a taste test. We couldn't believe the complexity. These oils were grassy, herby, fruity, and intense -- all at the same time, just like a complex wine. The vibrant colors ranged from deep green to golden. This was the real McCoy -- the kind oils you can only get in the best
European restaurants and the back-road bistros around the Mediterranean.
Frankly, we were surprised by the oil’s remarkable finish: A distinct “pepperiness” at the back of the throat, which is the hallmark of the very freshest oil. This peppery tang is due to the oleocanthal, a powerful anti-inflammatory compound that begins to disappear six months after pressing.
This is yet another reason to buy your olive oil fresh. That gentle peppery finish is an excellent indicator of how fresh (and therefore how healing) the olive oil may be.
We were so impressed by the oils we tried, we agreed to share our heartfelt feelings with the Healing Gourmet audience.
Of course, because these oils are artisanal, they are more expensive than ordinary store-bought olive oils. But we guarantee you’ve never tasted anything like them, nothing even close.
And considering that you can transform more than 30 meals with a single large bottle, you may consider them one of the best investments you can make in your family’s food budget.
This Bottle-for-a-Dollar Promotion Ends Saturday, May 22nd
The Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club is one of the most refreshingly customer-friendly companies we’ve ever come across. Unlike some other clubs, there’s never a minimum commitment or obligation to buy anything.
Every olive oil comes with a no-questions-asked, 100% money-back guarantee. And if you ever decide to ask for your money back on a given shipment, you don’t even have to return the oil.
Whatever you’ve received is yours to keep with T. J.’s compliments. And his outstanding customer service team graciously takes care of your refund request immediately.
If you’d like to try this unique Club and receive one of T. J.’s $39 bottles for just $1 to help cover shipping, we suggest that you act now, for two reasons:
- Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club has reserved a strictly limited number -- 240 bottles (20 cases) -- to share with our readers. Problem is, we have more than 80,000 weekly readers, so these 240 bottles will go very fast. First come, first served.
- His $39-Bottle-for-a-Buck offer expires Saturday, May 22nd. If you miss it, you’ll have to wait until the next harvest season and hope he repeats the offer.
This is the kind of generous, fair-minded offer we like to present to you for a product we truly love. It is also an excellent opportunity, perhaps the first in your life, to experience the exceptionally vibrant and delicious taste of extra virgin olive oil, fresh from the new harvest.
As we experienced, it adds whole new layers of flavor and satisfaction to your crisp salads and veggies, grilled meats, delicate fish, toasted nuts and seeds, and other favorite dishes.
The publicity this oil is getting is quite something. Foodies, celebrity chefs, and food writers are raving about it. Larry Olmsted, the award-winning food and travel journalist, recently wrote in his New York Times bestselling book, Real Food/Fake Food:
“I now get most of my oil from T. J. Robinson’s Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club, and every time I open a bottle, my kitchen literally fills up with the smell of fresh crushed olives—the scent explodes out of the bottle. Just breaking the seal transports me to Italy or Spain or Chile.”