How to store olive oil
As a very flexible rule, extra virgin olive oil can be stored for about a year. Keep it in a relatively cool, dark place. Heat and light are enemies, so stay away from window sills and stove sides. There’s no need to refrigerate, in fact, we recommend you avoid it.
How do you know your olive oil is real and unadulterated?
Every couple years it seems a big news story breaks that warns us of the dangers of adulterated extra virgin olive oil. The oils in these stories come from producers who are blending olive oils from many sources, mixing less expensive oils, possibly not from the region they say they are, possibly not extra virgin. By doing so they cut costs, but they also drastically cut the quality of the oil. While these diluted olive oils are no longer Extra Virgin Olive Oils, that’s what their label says. This is totally illegal, but it’s not uncommon in the Big Olive Oil Industry.
So how do we know that Zingerman’s olive oils aren’t subject to this kind of adulteration? For starters, we don’t buy from the Big Olive Oil Industry. We don’t really even buy from the Medium Olive Oil Industry. With very few exceptions, we’re buying our oils from farmers directly. They make olive oil using only the olives grown on their own estates. Most produce only a couple thousand bottles annually, as compared to the millions of bottles that come from the big companies, and they laugh at the idea that they’re importing containers of cheap oil to make a buck. We’ve visited most of them and, frankly, when you see the small scale of their production and the handiwork that goes into it, it’s no surprise that they’re baffled.
Last but not least, we taste every single olive oil many times a year to make sure that the quality is still up to snuff. You really can taste the difference.