This is not a piece about supermarket oil being bad. Supermarkets sell some perfectly decent olive oil, at prices small producers cannot match. Small producers make some wonderful oil, and some that is not worth the price. The label on the shelf, or the story on the website, rarely tells you which is which. Good questions do.
What each side does well
Supermarket and big-brand oil is easy to find, fairly priced and consistent. Large brands often blend oils from many sources so the taste stays the same all year. If you want a dependable cooking oil and do not want to think about it, that has real value.
Small producer oil often comes from fewer places, sometimes one, and from a single harvest. It can be more distinctive, and it may change from year to year. It is often easier to trace. It also costs more to make and to ship, and you usually buy it online or from a specialist shop.
Neither is automatically better. Ask the same questions of both.
1. Where exactly were the olives grown?
A country is a start. A region is better. A village or a farm is better still. If the label says “blend of olive oils of European Union origin” or “of non-European Union origin”, the oil came from several countries. That is legal and common. It also means nobody can tell you much about where it grew.
2. When were they harvested?
This is one of the most useful facts about any olive oil. Look for a harvest date or harvest season on the label. Without one, you only have a best-before date, which usually counts from bottling and can hide oil that was already old when it went into the bottle.
3. What is it packed in, and where has it been sitting?
Dark glass, tins and bag-in-box keep light out. Clear glass does not. In a shop, look at where the bottle is, too. Under bright lights, near a heater or in a sunny window are all poor places for oil. Online you cannot see the shelf, so the packaging and the harvest date matter even more.
4. Who made it?
Is a producer named on the bottle, with an address? A brand name alone does not tell you who grew the olives or ran the mill. That is fine for a staple. If you are paying more, you should be able to find out who you are paying.
5. What does the price pay for?
A higher price should buy something you can check: a specific origin, a recent harvest, better packaging. If a premium bottle cannot tell you more than a cheap one, the extra money is paying for the label design.
6. Can you trace this exact bottle?
UK and EU food law requires most packaged food to carry a lot mark, a batch code, unless the best-before date shows at least the day and month. So most bottles carry one somewhere. Usually it is there for the producer’s own records and for recalls, not for you. A producer who lets you look up your own bottle and see where and when it came from is one who is happy to be checked.
7. What does it taste like when you open it?
The final test happens in your kitchen. Pour a spoonful into a small glass, warm it in your hand, smell it, then sip. Fresh extra virgin oil smells green or fruity, and often has some bitterness and a peppery catch in the throat. Crayons, putty, stale nuts, damp or vinegar are faults, wherever the bottle came from.
The same rules for everyone
Small is not a guarantee, and big is not a warning. A small producer with no harvest date and a clear bottle deserves the same doubt as any supermarket own-label. A big brand that prints its origin clearly and packs in tins has earned some trust. Judge the bottle, not the size of the company.
We hold ourselves to the same list. Dukat oil is extra virgin, from Dukat, a village in Vlorë county, Albania. It is sold by Dukat Olives, a UK company, and each dark glass bottle carries a harvest date and a batch code that you can look up on our batch page.