Tasting, Blending and Choosing – Award Winning Extra Virgin Olive Oil
17/11/2015

If you are wondering…yes, I’m very competitive, and I love winning, so I take this very seriously. I also strongly believe that winning awards plays a key role in your company’s marketing and sales, setting your brand apart from the rest of the pack (which we all want). It has not come easily, and I have not “just been lucky.” There are reasons why I’ve been able to win awards, and I believe they come down to extreme attention to detail, controlling the entire processes of your oil from tree to bottle, time, and just plain hustle and drive.  The good news is, you can do it too, and I’m going to help you!

In a recent post, The Ultimate Guide to Producing Award Winning Extra Virgin Olive Oil - 11 Steps,  I talked about how to produce award-winning extra virgin olive oil. You can read that post in addition to this post if you want all the steps to winning awards with your oil, here.

1. Tasting
   • During the milling season I constantly taste the olive oils right when they are produced (most times only once), because there are times you can catch a really great oil.  You want to tag that container or batch for future tasting (making it easier to separate out your “award winning oils”).  On the flip side, you could find an oil that is flawed, and set it aside, so you don’t need to taste it again when picking your premium oils.  Why is it flawed?  Maybe the fruit sat too long before being milled, maybe the fruit was frozen, got hot, or maybe the mill was not cleaned properly and had rancid paste somewhere in the mill.  This all said, I find the most difficult time to taste oil, and accurately rate it, is right when the oil has been produced because that’s when it’s most robust.  It’s also when stronger flavors in the oil are amplified, making it hard to taste all the key characteristics of the oil like fruitiness, pungency and bitterness.  So, unless I can make a definite decision on an oil, I wait until the oil has been racked.  Drastic flavor changes can happen from the time the oil is milled to the time you taste again after it has been racked, which can be a span of 15 – 30 days sometimes.  So if you can’t make a definite call on an oil when you first taste it, wait until it has been racked.

   
   

   • Once your oil has been racked and you are ready to start tasting, you have to commit to tasting every single container/tank of oil you have.  I’ve had over 200 totes of oil produced in a year, and I’ve tasted every single one to determine what oils would be used for competitions, blending and for segregation in different sales channels.  This takes a lot of time.  Right.  Well, I’ve put the time in to do this, and that’s the difference!  It’s simple.

   
   

   • Once you are ready to put the time in and taste all your oil, get help doing it if you have more than 50 containers because you’ll need to track everything and your helper can take notes for you.  Anything less you can do on your own.  I taste by variety and can usually only go through about 10-15 containers a day before getting pallet fatigue.  I have spread tasting out over the day to get more in too.  If you are not feeling your best, I don’t recommend tasting.  Wait until you are 100% well again, so all your senses are firing on all cylinders.  Once you taste an oil, make notes immediately.  One strategy I have is to use large colored tags to write notes on, then attached the tag to the container so it is color coded.  My notes are right there for future reference, and different colors will mean different things.  For example, you could make all your competition oils one color, and oils you plan to sell in bulk another.  In a notebook, I also write down the container number and how I want to use it: competition, blending plans, etc…  Here is what I make notes on for the tag:
     1. Fruitiness – ranked on a scale of 1-3 where 1 is almost no fruit, and 3 is very fruity (blow your mind fruity)
     2. Pungency/Intensity – ranked on a scale of 1-3 where 1 is delicate and smooth, and 3 is robust and grassy (at least a couple coughs)
     3. Bitterness – ranked on a scale of 1-3 where 1 is no bitterness, and 3 is way too bitter (like the bitter beer face guy)
     4. Balanced – Yes/No
     5. Nose – the smell of the oil ranked on a scale of 1-3, where very little nose is a 1, and a big floral fruity nose is a 3
     6. How to us it – competition, blending, a special customer, etc…
     7. Extra notes – “This oil kicks butt!” or “tastes old” or “holy cow this will win an award” or “re-taste something is off” or “what variety is this again?” or “needs to be blended out, way too bitter”….etc.

     
     

2. Blending
   • Once you have tasted all your oil, made notes, and segregated your containers, then you are ready to start blending (if you need to), for all your bottling needs.

   
   

   • I’ll blend according to a few things, #1) Profile: Maybe I want a buttery profile, or a really robust one.  #2 Certain Variety: Maybe I need a certain amount of Koroneiki or other variety, so I’ll blend like varieties together and create a “lot.”  In this case, a “lot” to me, would be a designated amount of oil that is set aside for a single use.  This is really important, because if I find an exceptional oil that I want to use for competition, then I’ll go to every length to keep it separated from everything else, and not blend it.  This oil would go into a special bottle or be the only oil I use under a certain label.  Once it’s sold out, that would be it.  This would make it special.  If I had a Manzanillo label, and one lot that was my award winning oil, and another that was still very good, but not an award winner, I would designate and highlight the award winning oil with a special sticker, or some other unique way, and sell it as such.  The last thing you want to do is highlight an oil as exceptional, and it not be: this could hurt your brand.

   
   

   • Perform your blending, then give your oil a couple days to sit, because once you blend, that oil is going to change flavor again.  I’ve blended thinking two oils or three oils would taste a certain way, then had them taste completely different from what I expected a couple days later. More