You can trace the history from olive oil from 6000 years ago. The more soild history of olive oil can be traced into Ancient Greece in 3000BC. They are the largest producer of olive oil and spread into the Mediterranean region.

Until now, The production of olive oil can be found all around the world. And Spain is the largest producer in the world. With the Environment and geography advantage, Olive oil in Spain have won a lot of award in the world. Even Italy need import olive oil from Spain.

The Good olive oil contain a lot of nutrition, such as vitamin, antioxidants, unsaturated fat, etc. Before the oil have made, every step have to be under very well control to give the olive oil best quality.

However, a lot of manufacture using a lot of method to increase the production rate but ignore the quality of end product nowaday. The oil they produced contain less nutrition valve,  a lot of saturated fat and it is not good for your health (Especially for cardiovascular). Some of the manufacture even add artificial color which give the oil more green and look like unfilterd.

The olive oil can classify as: Extra-Virgin, Virgin, Refined, Pomance, Extra Light.

You may grade it as: Extra-Virgin>>Virgin>>Refined>>Extra Light=Pomance.

It need to pass its Quantitative analysis and tasting test for classification.

The parameter we test:

1)Acidity: The parameter evaluates the olive freshness and damaged condition. The olive oil made by fresh and non-damaged olive will give lower value of Acidity. Also, High acidity will give you Unpalatable taste. The Extra Virigin Olive Oil cannot excees 0.8%.

2)Peroxide index: This detects the incipient oxidisation, Oxidisation leads to the oil going rancid. The index also gives information about alerations in the natural antioxidants. The Freash olive oil give lower value. The Extra Virgin Olive Oil must not exceed 20 meq O2/kg

3)Wax content: It just like the fingerprint of Extra Virigin, Non-Extra Virgin and Refined Olive Oil give Higher value. The content of Extra Virigin olive oil cannot exceed 150mg/kg

4) K232 and K270: These criterias complement the information obrain from the peroxide index as well as measuring purity.  For Extra Virgin Olive Oil the K'232 value cannot exceed 2.50 and the K'270 value of 0.22

Extra-Virgin is a highest grade of olive oil, it normally used good quality of olive, never used chemical solvent and using cold extraction method. It contains no more than 0.8% free acidity which will affect the taste of olive oil. It can give you a superior taste, fruitiness and no sensory defects.

Virgin is slightly lower quality from Extra-virgin, free acidity normally up to 2%. The reason of lower quality mainly is low quality or smashed olive.

Refined olive oil cannot used before refining due to very high level of acidity. To reduce it, they used chemical solvent (such as charcoal) to remove the excessed acid but also other nutrition so it give low nutrition valve. Also, manufacture will use heat exaction and chemical exaction  to increase the olive oil production amount and  it make the nutrition valve decease more.

Please noted that Olive pomance oil and Extra Light olive oil actaully cannot classify as olive oil.

Although we claim that Extra-Virgin olive oil is high class oil, you can still able to distingish the level of all Extra-Virgin product by yourself. Because the content of olive oil and type of olive can still affect the taste of olive too!