What I Learned About The Olive Oil Industry That Surprised Me Most

I went into this industry with a lot of assumptions. Some of them were partially right. Most of them were wrong — or at least far more complicated than I expected. Here's what actually surprised me after years of sourcing directly from producers.

I assumed awards meant everything

They mean something. A producer who wins consistently at the NYIOOC or the Biol is almost certainly doing something right. But here's what nobody tells you upfront: there are now well over a thousand brands carrying some form of award or medal, across dozens of competitions worldwide. That's not cynicism — that's just the math of a rapidly expanding industry with a rapidly expanding competition circuit.

The more time I spent in this world, the more I noticed something else. These competitions exist, at least in part, to promote themselves. The organizers benefit from entries, coverage, and sponsorships. Getting your oil in front of a panel of judges does not, in any meaningful way, translate into getting your oil in front of customers. A gold medal is not a marketing engine. It's a credential — useful on a shelf card, meaningful in a press kit, but not something that moves product on its own.

There's also a common misconception worth clearing up: a gold medal in olive oil does not mean you won first place. It means an oil achieved a top-tier quality threshold — the same way a university might graduate a hundred students with honors in the same year. It's a mark of excellence, not a ranking. Many oils receive gold at the same competition. That's worth understanding before you let a medal be the deciding factor in what you buy.

I now use awards as a first filter, not a final answer. They narrow the field. They don't define it.

I assumed expensive meant better

Sometimes. Not always. Price in olive oil is driven by quality, yes — but also by marketing spend, brand positioning, the length of the distribution chain, and frankly, how well a producer can tell a story. Some of the most extraordinary oils I've tasted were priced modestly because the producer had no marketing budget and no distributor taking a margin. Some of the most expensive oils I've tasted were entirely ordinary.

This is one of the core reasons we Mostly go direct. When you remove the intermediaries, you can pay the producer more and charge the customer less — without sacrificing anything on quality. The price you see from us reflects the oil, not the overhead of three parties between the grove and your kitchen.

I assumed Italian meant the best

Italy produces extraordinary olive oil. It also produces enormous volumes of ordinary olive oil, much of it sold at extraordinary prices on the strength of the country's culinary reputation. The "Italian olive oil" category is not a guarantee — it's a heritage. And heritage, as anyone in this industry knows, can be used as a shortcut by producers who are coasting on it.

Chile, Greece, Spain, and California all produce oils that are the equal of — and in many cases indistinguishable from — the finest Italian production. Often at a fraction of the price, simply because they lack the marketing history. Some of the most complex, polyphenol-rich oils we carry come from estates that most American consumers have never heard of, in regions they'd struggle to place on a map. That's not a liability. That's an opportunity for the curious.

What actually surprised me most

How few people in the US have ever tasted genuinely great olive oil. Not award-winning olive oil, not expensive olive oil — just fresh, properly handled, harvest-dated oil from a producer who cares. And how immediately, viscerally obvious the difference is the moment they do. The peppery finish. The grassy nose. The way it coats differently. People who taste it for the first time often describe it as realizing what they'd been missing.

That gap — between what most people assume olive oil is and what it can actually be — is still the reason we exist. Not to lecture, but to close the distance between exceptional producers and the people who'd love what they make, if only they knew it existed.

[Taste the difference →]