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Tasting olive oil
From bitter to sweet

From the taste of the oil you can deduct in which period, olive yard and earth the olives have been cultivated. Once you have tried real good oil and have learned to recognise and appreciate it, you'll want nothing else.

To taste the oil, take a little bit in your mouth. First let it rest a few seconds under your tongue. The oil only gets a really good taste if it's mixed with your saliva. Then you spread the oil through your mouth and let it rest under your tongue again. Then suck in air through the corners of your mouth to fully experience the aroma. Now you'll immediately taste the difference between a good and a bad oil.

Tasting olive oil

The best way to recognise oil is to play a little game of associations. Just let your mind wander and soon you'll recognize the aroma as a smell or taste from your daily life. Immediately you'll know if you have good or bad oil in your mouth. For this, you don't need a practised tongue. Now swallow the oil to be able to make the difference between spicy and soft oil. Both are a sign of good quality, but it is important to know the difference when you want to cook with the oil: your meal can taste very different if the oil, which is the base of your dish, is not in harmony with the other ingredients.

The difference in taste goes back to the sort of olive that forms the base of the oil: a green olive gives a more bitter taste, whereas a black one tastes sweeter.

More about the olive:
Olive oil, the Tuscan life elixir
Tasting olive oil

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- This site was realised thanks to the co-operation between the town council and the inhabitants of Torrita di Siena and ten graduated students 2004 from the “Katholieke Hogeschool Mechelen”, Belgium, department communication science, campus De Ham. - © Torrita di Siena

 

  

More about the olive:
Olive oil, the Tuscan life elixir
Tasting olive oil

Learn to recognize and appreciate the different tastes. A usefull diagram on the website of La Romita ( www.laromita.it ) can help you.