Reading the label carefully
Olive oil is easy to falsify, and tampering is hard to detect by sight, smell or taste. In the vast majority of cases, consumers can only smell and taste the oil after buying it. Usually knowing rather little about the product, they are swayed by packaging, a label, a price or a salesperson's comments, and often remain unaware of the real quality of what they have bought.
So it pays to be vigilant and to decode the information on labels. Here are some tips to greatly improve your chances of buying a genuinely good oil, whatever the price.
Always look for the origin
In France, if the label says "produced in the European Union", the oil very probably comes from Spain, like nearly 70% of the olive oil imported into France (68% in 2024, according to FranceAgriMer). If the label says "produced outside the European Union", it most often comes from Morocco or Tunisia. So if an olive oil with a French or Italian brand name says "produced in the European Union", it is not made in the brand's country.
Look for the best-before date
Allow about two years on average between the extraction date and the best-before date to get an idea of how fresh the product is. Good extra virgin oil is extracted between October and December, whereas most olive oil in France is consumed in summer. Choose products whose best-before date is more than a year away. Some state the harvest season or month, the ideal information for judging freshness: the rules allow this only if all the oil in the bottle comes from that harvest.
Choose the container
Avoid plastic or clear glass bottles; choose properly opaque glass bottles.
Choose sealed caps (prior opening is visible) with a non-refillable pourer, which prevents the bottle from being reused. A non-refillable pourer is cleaner, prevents tampering and above all makes it easy to measure the oil: only a few drops come out with each movement, whereas with an open neck a quarter of the bottle can pour out. Avoid corks, which let oil run down the neck and do not keep air out once the bottle is open, especially in restaurants.
Choose small containers (250, 500 or 750 ml) to reduce the oil's exposure to air: even with very good caps, some air always gets into the bottle and greatly speeds up oxidation. Think about how much you actually use and don't buy containers that are too big just to save money: do you really get through 5 litres of olive oil a year?
Choose PDO oils
The specifications imposed on producers (quality criteria well above the already high ones for extra virgin oil), systematic checks (sampling, chemical and sensory analyses, sealed tanks), a tamper-proof seal (special ink visible under ultraviolet light, like banknotes) and the numbering of each back label ensure a high degree of traceability.
PDO bodies generally own the back labels and hand them to the bottler as bottling proceeds, after checking what is being bottled. All PDOs have a website and can be contacted by phone or email. It is very easy to check a label's authenticity by giving its number, and to check that the brand really sells products approved by the designation.
Other useful information
The label must state the name and address of the brand or distributor in the European Union, as well as the storage instruction "away from light and heat".
Some labels show the mill's health approval number, which is not compulsory in France but is in Spain and Italy. In France this number has 4 digits followed by N/O. In Spain it starts with 16 and ends with 2 or 3 letters that depend on the province where the mill is located.
The olive varieties listed help confirm PDO status: PDO specifications require local olive varieties.
The nutrition declaration (energy, fat, carbohydrate, protein, salt), compulsory since 13 December 2016, tells you very little. On the other hand, optional analysis results such as acidity, peroxide value and polyphenol and vitamin E content give valuable information about the oil's quality. Bear in mind, though, that they refer to the product at bottling: the peroxide value, which measures oxidation, and the polyphenol content, which falls as they oxidise, change over time.
Organic olive oils
Organic olive oils (called "ecológico" in Spain) that genuinely meet organic standards (no chemical fertilisers or synthetic pesticides), checked and approved by an official certification body, carry the EU organic logo and often a national or regional logo (AB in France, CAAE in Spain, ICEA or AIAB in Italy…). They also carry a certification code beginning with two letters for the country of origin (FR for France, ES for Spain, IT for Italy…). In Spain, the region is added at the end (AN for Andalusia, AR for Aragon…). This is an additional guarantee of origin.
If you can taste it
Colour
Freshly extracted oil is a fairly bright green, like the organic logo, which fades after three or four months. Generally it is golden, more or less deep, sometimes with green glints; darkness tends to make it look greener. If it turns brownish, that is usually a bad sign. Unfiltered oil looks cloudy, sometimes with sediment at the bottom, which is not ideal for oil more than six months old. Still, it is hard to judge on appearance alone.
Smell
An oxidised oil has, at best, no smell and, at worst, a smell of wet straw, or even manure when it is very rancid. On the other hand, a recently extracted oil, or one from a particularly stable, well-stored variety, smells strongly of fresh olives and cut grass, sometimes of almond or apple.
Taste
Olive oil has three main tastes: fruity, bitter and pungent. Fruitiness is the most positive attribute; it corresponds to the taste of fresh olives. Bitterness and pungency may seem negative but are in fact a sign of quality, because they indicate a high concentration of antioxidants, particularly polyphenols.
Fruitiness comes through first, along with the smell; bitterness comes a little later, once the oil has coated the tongue; pungency arrives 5 or 6 seconds later, in the throat. These tastes are joined by notes and aftertastes. The most common are cut grass, fresh or toasted almond, tomato, basil, apple, banana, artichoke, nuts and fig. They come from aromatic molecules; oils that clearly reveal them are the most sought after, as they show optimal production. For more details, see the Tasting page.