Before an olive oil joins our product list, samples are mailed to olive oil experts as well as our clients for tasting evaluation. All of our olive oils have received excellent remarks by all who have tasted them.

Beyond taste, we have six quality standards for our extra virgin olive oil.

• Stone-Ground and Cold-Pressed: Olives must be pressed using traditional stone ground and cold presses rather than centrifugal presses.
  
• Extra Virgin and Naturally Low Acidity: Olive oil with less than one percent acidity is classified as extra virgin and is considered to be the top grade of olive oil. Our oils have achieved this low acidity naturally, without any chemical treatments.  This is important, as some producers use chemical treatments to create an artificially de-acidified product that can still be labeled and sold as "extra virgin." 
  
• The First Pressing: Our extra virgin olive oils are derived from the first pressing only, and not the second or third pressings, which produce oils inferior in flavor, texture and health benefits.  They are not extracted using any solvents, so they contain only whatever was in the olive itself. 
  
• Minimum Filtration: The oil must have minimum filtration, which is a process that clarifies the liquid but eliminates the rich olive flavor residing in the unfiltered particles.
  
• Rapid Pressing: The olives are crushed within hours of picking because storage of the olives triggers fermentation processes in the fruit. When there is a delay in the crushing of the olives, the oil in the fruit can become increasingly acidic and take on undesirable, detrimental flavors and aromas.
  
• Organic Certification: Most important, our olive oils must be independently certified as organic in accordance with European Union regulations, or produced under organic farming practices pending such certification.

In addition, The Olive Tree World considers several others factors in selecting our oils:

• Single Estate: Olives are grown on a single farm or estate that are pressed and bottled on the premises produce Single Estate olive oil. This facilitates total quality control and certification by the European Union of the organic methods of farming.
  
• Denomination of Origin as a Symbol of Quality: In Europe, it has long been believed that soil content and composition confer certain flavors to the fruits produced because of the way in which the various minerals, clays or limestones interact.
  
• Packaging: Our olive oils are unfiltered and packaged in dark glass bottles to protect them from damaging light.  During the storage of olive oil in transparent glass bottles, oil oxidation processes take place due to light exposure. According to research conducted by G. Mastrobattista (Italian Journal of Food Science #3/1990), decomposition of chlorophyll slowed down when dark colored glass was used for bottling the olive oil.