(BPT) - Olive oil is a star ingredient for good reason. Nutritious and delicious, olive oil provides a wide range of benefits, from promoting heart health to protecting your brain.
With a variety of olive oil options to choose from, people are often searching for ways to find the 'best' product. As a result, some may attach certain values or preferences to 'single origin' versus multi-country olive oil blends, even going so far as to claim (incorrectly) that blended olive oils are inferior or even fake.
But what denotes real quality, and what's just misinformation?
Multi-country vs. single-origin olive oils
The difference between multi-country and single-origin olive oils comes down to sourcing. Multi-country blends combine olive oils from different countries, and clear disclosures are required.
On the other hand, there are no regulations around what the term 'single origin' means for olive oil. It could refer to olives grown from a single estate, region or country.
More importantly, 'single origin' doesn't tell you anything about an olive oil's quality. Quality results from the hard work and skill of the farmers who cultivated and harvested the olives, the miller who extracted the oil and, in some cases, the bottler who masterfully crafts a blend with different olive oils.
So, what should you know about multi-country olive oil blends, and why are they worth considering?
1. Olive oil - like wine - can often achieve great, consistent flavor with 'coupage' or blended combinations.
Winemakers often blend wines of different origins and varieties in a process known as 'coupage.' In fact, some famous appellations like Chianti and Rioja are required by law to blend different regional wines.
Like with grapes, olives from different harvests can have different flavor profiles due to a variety of factors. To account for this, winemakers and olive oil makers can use coupage to balance flavor and achieve consistency year after year.
Similar to wines, a coupage of olive oils from different origins can be high quality. In fact, it's not uncommon to find such olive oil blends among the winners of consumer taste tests.
2. Multi-country blends make quality olive oil accessible when and where you want it.
When we go to the store, we expect our favorite olive oil to be there. The practice of blending olive oils from different regions helps make sure our preferred products are on the shelf, and they taste the way we expect them to - even if certain growing regions have a difficult season due to weather, which can negatively impact both the availability and quality of olive oil.
3. Olive oil blends are transparent about their countries of origin.
For many people, olive oil quality is associated with traceability (i.e., where did this olive oil come from?). However, traceability doesn't depend on the olive oil having a 'single origin.'
Olive oil blends are required by law to disclose their olive oils' countries of origin, and that's what producers do. What's more, some producers even use blockchain data and QR codes to help provide additional transparency.
Any suggestion that an olive oil listing more than one country on the label is 'fake' is disingenuous. If anything, the level of transparency olive oil blends provide should give you confidence in the authenticity of the product you're buying.
Whether you prefer single-origin or blended olive oil, the trustworthiness of the producer is the most important factor.
At the end of the day, neither single-origin nor multi-country olive oil blends are inherently better than the other.
Both small-estate producers and larger companies with positive brand recognition can be trusted to take all steps needed to assure the quality of the oil in their bottles, regardless of where the oil comes from. You can also look for seals like NAOOA Certified and Extra Virgin Alliance.
Whether you choose a single-origin olive oil or a multi-country blend, what truly matters is the level of transparency provided on the label and the care and craftsmanship that goes into the bottle.
