Why does good olive oil catch at the back of your throat?
That is oleocanthal, a compound found in fresh olive oil. It is strongest in young oil pressed from green fruit, and it fades over the year. A peppery catch means the oil is fresh. No catch at all usually means it is old.
The catch sits at the back of the throat, not on the tongue. That is unusual. Almost everything else you taste registers further forward.
Tasters call it pungency and they score it on a scale. One cough is a mild oil. Two or three is a robust one.
It comes from green fruit. Riper olives give more oil and less bite, so waiting is the cheaper choice. We pick in December, green, and take the smaller yield.
It fades. The same bottle catches less in June than it did in January. Nothing has gone wrong — the oil is simply older.
So a supermarket bottle with no catch at all is telling you something. Not that it is bad for you. Just that it has very little left to say.
We publish the numbers.
Free acidity, peroxide value, the date it was picked and the date it was bottled. Every batch we bring into the United States.
The lab sheet