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There are many shades of good extra vir­gin olive oil. It can range from light yel­low to a bright green. However, when it is orange, it is most likely ran­cid.

We caught up with shop­pers in a large Seville super­mar­ket to ask their opin­ion of the hun­dreds of jugs of orange-col­ored olive oil on offer. ​“There is some­thing wrong with that oil. I would not buy it,” one woman told Olive Oil Times. They couldn’t exactly pin­point the prob­lem but con­sumers did rec­og­nize it was likely of poor qual­ity.

When we spoke with the store man­ager, he was unaware that the olive oil could be ran­cid. He told us that his com­pany had informed him that the olive oil was fine. He went on to explain that it changes to an orange hue from the sun­light.

He was right. The olive oil that was on the shelves clos­est to the light had a higher orange inten­sity. Unfortunately, he lacked knowl­edge on qual­ity con­trol and was mis­in­formed on the label­ing stan­dards that the prod­uct was now clearly vio­lat­ing.

After pur­chas­ing three of the most ​‘ran­cid-look­ing’ olive oils labeled as extra vir­gin and infor­mally tast­ing them with other experts, it was evi­dent the prod­ucts were not just ran­cid but they also pos­sessed faults such as muddy sed­i­ment and winey, clearly not extra vir­gin.

The International Olive Council (IOC) has estab­lished stan­dards and guide­lines for ​“panel test,” a method that clas­si­fies olive oil grades by imple­ment­ing 8 to 12 trained tast­ing experts. To date, this is still the best and most cost-effec­tive pro­ce­dure to mea­sure organolep­tic qual­ity. When a panel is unan­i­mous that an olive oil has a spe­cific fault, the prod­uct can­not be labeled as extra vir­gin. This method is applic­a­ble to all olive oils that are pro­duced in IOC mem­ber coun­tries.

Who is liable for a prod­uct that is labeled as extra vir­gin olive oil but does not pass these stan­dards? Perhaps, the super­mar­ket plays a role in the prod­uct being ran­cid by not fol­low­ing instruc­tions to keep it away from the light. However, much of the respon­si­bil­ity lies with the bot­tling and export­ing com­pa­nies.

Recently, bot­tling com­pa­nies in Spain have found them­selves under increased scrutiny regard­ing the panel test, and it is rais­ing legal issues that are wor­ry­ing many bot­tling com­pa­nies.

According to AgroNegocios, the board of direc­tors of Anierac (National Association for Industrial Bottling and Refineries of Edible Oil) and Asoliva (Spanish Association for Industrial and Commercial Exporters of Olive Oil) spoke out con­firm­ing that, ​“the bot­tling com­pa­nies have a respon­si­bil­ity to ensure that the prod­ucts they are bot­tling and sell­ing cor­re­spond with the char­ac­ter­is­tics pre­sented in the label.”

The board of direc­tors advised these com­pa­nies to request a recent cer­tifi­cate (no more than three months old) car­ried out by an accred­ited lab­o­ra­tory from all of their providers. The cer­tifi­cate, they explained, should include results for both the physic­o­chem­i­cal and organolep­tic (panel) tests.

The sub­jec­tiv­ity of the panel test has also been under a per­pet­ual debate within the olive oil sec­tor. Perhaps, Anuncia Carpio, a top Spanish taster explained the impor­tance of the panel test best: ​“To get rid of the test would ulti­mately hurt the pro­duc­ers as well as bot­tling com­pa­nies. It would give free reign to large dis­trib­u­tors. If these large com­pa­nies are able to play with prices and vol­umes now, I can’t imag­ine what they could do with­out an organolep­tic analy­sis.”

• International Olive Council


• Asociacion Nacional de Industriales Envasadores y Refinadores de Aceites Comestibles