Do you really have to slurp the oil noisily? Yes. And if it makes you cough, that is often a good sign. Tasting olive oil is not entirely something you can improvise, but the professionals' method comes down to a few simple steps. You can try it at home, this evening, with two or three oils.
Why a blue glass?
On tasting panels, the oil is served in a small dark blue glass. This is not an affectation. The colour of an oil says nothing about its quality: a very green oil can be mediocre, a golden oil can be superb. The blue glass hides the colour so that the taster is not influenced. You judge with your nose and mouth, not your eyes.
At home, a small liqueur glass or a wine glass will do. If you want to play along, ask someone to serve the oils without telling you which is which.
Warming the oil in your hand
Pour a tablespoon of oil into the glass, about 15 ml. Cover it with the palm of one hand and hold it in the other. The warmth of your hand gently raises the temperature of the oil. The official method of the International Olive Council sets this temperature at around 28 °C. This is where the aromas are best released.
Swirl the oil two or three times in the glass so that it coats the sides. Wait a minute, keeping your hand over it.
Smell first
Remove your hand and breathe in slowly, in short sniffs. What comes to mind? Cut grass, tomato leaf, artichoke, almond, green apple? These are the notes you are looking for. Together they make up what tasters call fruitiness.
Do not look for the right word straight away. Start with a simple question: does it smell fresh, green, alive? Or does it smell stale, greasy, old? Your first answer is often the right one.
Strippaggio: slurping noisily
Take a small sip. Hold it on your tongue. Then, with your teeth almost closed, draw air in through the corners of your mouth, in short bursts, making a slight whistling sound. Italians call this technique strippaggio.
The air sprays the oil around your mouth and carries the aromas up to your nose via the back of the palate. This is known as the retronasal route. You then smell the oil a second time, with much greater precision. It is not elegant, but it is how every tasting panel works. Keep the oil in your mouth for about ten seconds, then swallow or spit it out.
The professionals' scale: fruitiness, bitterness, pungency
A taster scores three main qualities.
Fruitiness
This is the full range of aromas of healthy, fresh olives. Green fruitiness describes olives picked while still green (grass, artichoke, leaf), and ripe fruitiness describes riper olives (softer notes, almond, fruit). It is scored from light to intense.
Bitterness
You taste it on the tongue, slightly towards the back. Many people think a bitter oil is a failed oil. The opposite is true. Bitterness comes from olives picked early, while still green, and it is one of the qualities sought after.
Pungency
This is the peppery sensation that arrives a few seconds later, at the back of the throat. Sometimes it makes you cough. In tasting rooms, you often hear coughing: that is generally good news. This tingling is linked to polyphenols, and in particular to oleocanthal. The younger and richer in polyphenols an oil is, the more peppery it is. We explain what these compounds are in our article Polyphenols: what makes a real olive oil.
A fine oil finds its balance between all three. None should overwhelm the others.
And defects?
The panel also looks for what is wrong: a smell of rancidity, mustiness, wine or tank sediment. A single perceived defect is enough for an oil to lose the right to the "extra virgin" designation. That is why a "defect 0" score counts as much as fruitiness. In the 2026 organoleptic panel, our Skourochori cuvée obtained a defect score of 0. You can view its results, along with those of our other cuvées, on our analyses page.
A few tips for tasting at home
- Taste on an empty stomach or well away from a meal, with no coffee or cigarette just beforehand.
- Start with the mildest oil and finish with the most intense.
- Between two oils, bite into a piece of green apple and drink a little water.
- No more than four or five oils in a row: the palate tires quickly.
- Note down your impressions straight away, in your own words.
Going further: L'Art de la Perception
These techniques are quick to learn, but they take practice. That is the purpose of our masterclass "L'Art de la Perception", which we co-lead with Emmanuelle Dechelette, founder of Olio Nuovo Days. Blue glass in hand, you learn to recognise fruitiness, gauge bitterness and name a defect, using real oils. All the details are on our experiences page.
To practise, the Oikos Antalis cuvées are waiting to be discovered among our bottles.
The next time you open a bottle, take a minute. Warm, smell, slurp. And if you cough, smile.
And at Oikos Antalis?
- Zero defects: at the 2026 sensory panel, Cuvée Skourochori showed no defect at all, a condition for being classed extra virgin.
- Bitterness and pungency: they come from polyphenols. Our cuvées contain 424 and 359 mg/kg in the 2026 harvest, above the 250 mg/kg threshold of the EU health claim.
- From olive to glass: early harvest by hand in early October, cold extraction the same day, 25 minutes of malaxation.
- Judged blind: 13 medals for our cuvées in Paris, New York, Tokyo and Abu Dhabi.
To practise, our cuvées are in our bottles, and their analyses on our Analyses page.