Why Bother Tasting Properly?

Most of us treat olive oil as a background ingredient: a slick in the frying pan, a drizzle over tomatoes, a splash in a dressing. Yet a good extra virgin olive oil is as expressive as a wine, and it changes with the variety of olive, the soil, the weather and the exact week the fruit was picked. Learning to taste it takes one evening, a few small glasses and a willingness to slurp.

Once you can recognise fruitiness, bitterness and that peppery catch at the back of your throat, everything else shifts. You will shop more confidently, cook more deliberately, and stop spending good money on oil that has quietly gone stale at the back of a cupboard. Tasting at home is not a professional ritual or a test you can fail. It is simply paying attention, deliberately, with a notebook to hand.

What You Need (Less Than You Think)

You don't need laboratory equipment or a trained palate. You need a clean kitchen counter and a handful of everyday items.

• Small glasses — two or three. A tulip-shaped tasting glass is ideal, but a small tumbler or a sherry glass works perfectly well. Use glass, never plastic, and make sure it is genuinely clean; lingering washing-up liquid or a dishwasher's scent will wreck the aroma.
• A cover — a saucer, a small plate or a square of card to sit on top of each glass and trap the aromatics.
• Two or three oils — ideally a delicate one and a robust one, so you have something to compare. All at room temperature.
• A palate cleanser — room-temperature water and a couple of slices of apple or plain bread. Not cheese, not salted crackers, not olives.
• A notebook — a few words per oil is enough. Memory for aromas is unreliable, and your notes are where the learning happens.

Before you start, clear the air: no perfume, no scented candles, no freshly brewed coffee nearby. Olive oil's aromatics are subtle, and a strong smell in the room will simply erase them.

The Method, Step by Step

Pour roughly a tablespoon — about 15ml — into each glass. That is plenty; you are tasting, not drinking.

• Warm the oil in your hands. Cup the base of the glass in both palms for a minute or two. Your body heat lifts the oil to around 28°C, which releases its aromatics. This is the opposite of wine tasting: cold oil smells of almost nothing.
• Cover and swirl. Sit the saucer on top, then swirl gently so the oil coats the sides of the glass and the headspace fills with aroma.
• Smell before you taste. Lift the cover, bring the glass to your nose and take two short sniffs, mouth closed. Freshly cut grass? Green apple? Artichoke? Tomato leaf? Almond? Write down the first thing that comes to mind, however odd it sounds.
• Sip and aerate. Take a small sip and hold it at the front of your mouth. Purse your lips slightly and draw air in across the oil — a gentle, quiet slurp. This spreads the oil over your tongue and up into your nose, where most of the flavour actually lives.
• Hold, then swallow. Let the oil travel to the back of your mouth and wait a few seconds. Now note what happens as you swallow and in the seconds afterwards.

What You're Actually Tasting

Almost everything worth knowing about an olive oil falls into three categories.

• Fruitiness — the aroma and flavour of fresh fruit. Early-harvest oils tend to be green and grassy, with notes of artichoke, green almond or tomato leaf. Later-harvest oils are riper and rounder: apple, banana, a buttery softness.
• Bitterness — felt at the back and sides of the tongue. Many beginners assume bitterness is a fault. It isn't. It signals fresh polyphenols and is a mark of a lively, recently made oil. It should be pleasant and clean, not harsh or lingering unpleasantly.
• Pungency — the peppery catch at the back of your throat, the thing that makes you cough. That reaction is caused by oleocanthal, the same compound behind the sting of ibuprofen, and a robust oil will make you cough once. Do not apologise for it. It is a compliment.

Two clarifications worth holding on to: acidity is a laboratory measurement, not something you can taste, so a bitter oil is not necessarily an acidic one. And the roundness often described as sweetness is a sensation of balance, not sugar.

Cleansing Your Palate and Comparing Oils

Taste from the mildest oil to the most robust, otherwise the big, green ones will flatten everything that follows. Between each, sip water at room temperature and nibble a slice of apple — the classic cleanser at professional tastings — or a piece of plain bread. Wait half a minute before moving on.

Score each oil out of ten for fruitiness, bitterness and pungency, and note how long the finish lasts. Two oils side by side teach you far more than five tasted in a rush. Better still, taste the same oil twice: once plain, once with a pinch of salt on a piece of tomato. You will taste how dramatically food changes it.

Keeping Your Oil in Tasting Condition

An oil is at its best in the months after pressing. Buy in small bottles or tins, look for a harvest date rather than a vague best-before, and keep the oil in a cool, dark cupboard away from the hob and the oven. The fridge is too cold and will make it cloudy and solid; it recovers, but you will not taste it properly at that temperature.

Screw the cap down tightly after every use, use your oldest bottle first, and treat delicate, peppery oils as finishing oils rather than frying oils. Then taste them again in a month. Your notes will surprise you, and your palate will have moved on.