Threpsi Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil | Extracted Cold | 100% Koroneiki Olives | Grown by Small Family Farmers near Kalamata

This extra virgin olive oil is outstanding quality with a rich, fresh flavor that instantly elevates any dish. I use it for everyday cooking and finishing meals, and it consistently delivers smooth taste and excellent results.

Outstanding olive oil! A nice bite and finish. High quality and high in polyphenols making this one my favorite so far. A good value product. I will order again

This olive oil is terrific. I visited Samos Greece last year, and went to an olive oil factory. And brought some back to the US. It was the best. However, you cannot buy it on Amazon so I went with this brand. It taste identical. I have purchased five bottles of this in the past six months. I highly highly recommend it.

Very good and tasty olive oil! One bottle got damaged during delivery, maybe a better packaging could have saved 500ml of this nice olive oil

This pesticide-free CERTIFIED ORGANIC EVOO is from Greece. It's grown & harvested in small batches on family farms. It's best enjoyed as is, but can also be used for cooking & baking. It has a distinct flavor & aroma. We use alot of olive oil. This is one of our favorites! When we're in the mood for a simple but delicious olive oil & red wine vinegar salad dressing, we reach for the Threpsi. It's perfect for everyday use.

Exquisite taste , polyphenols rich, great value for quality.

This Olive oil is of high quality and it offer you so many health benefits. I love the taste and aroma of this extra virgin olive oil. I will purchase again.

On the surface this is a nice everyday low to medium temperature cooking oil, I used it a while for baking. But then I began to wonder about how mild it was. Didn't extra virgin oil always have a strong flavor? Was there a certain olive variety that was mild like this? In exploring this, I ran into a tangled web that the olive oil industry has created. It is not limited to Threpsi, but seems to be global with this type of mild, mid-range olive oil from the Mediterranean countries at this point. Long ago, there was only primitive pressing for olive oil. Quality was really high, and yields were low. But with this method, olive oil developed an incredible reputation, and in the ancient world, olive oil was a very big deal. But, the very strong taste meant it could readily be adulterated with other oils. It's important to understand that the adulteration of oil has been going on for a very long time. Over time, hydraulic presses increased yield. The best quality oil was from the first pressing of olive paste that had not been heated. By the mid-20th century, the term ‘first cold-press’ came into use, and this oil became known as extra-virgin, the highest of four categories of quality. Also in the mid-20th century another process for making oil, called centrifuging, was developed. Centrifuging increases yield, and can do this markedly. But, for this reason, centrifuging also has the potential to lower quality. Industry-oriented sites about olive oil are pro-centrifuging, but consumer advocates are unilateral, and often adamant, in stating it produces lower quality oil. The word ‘centrifuging’ is not used in marketing, instead they say the oil is produced by ‘mechanical means only’. But at this point, the vast majority of producers are centrifuging, including those whose farms are noted by consumer advocate groups formed to combat adulterated oil, such a Flos Olei. And it is logical that centrifuging would generate different levels of quality depending on the ripeness and overall quality of the olives, the skill of the operator, and how much oil is extracted. As such, in spite of the conflict with first cold-press, which is the original definition of extra-virgin, the issue doesn't seem be centrifuging itself, but the intent behind it. Over time, the industry noticed three important things about the consumers in non-producing countries: 1) they are not thrilled by the inherent strong taste of high quality olive oil, 2) they don't want to pay how much this quality of oil costs, yet 3) they want and extra-virgin oil. And so, slowly but surely the industry created a brand new product: an extra-virgin oil with a mild flavor and a moderate price. Yet this is doubly impossible, because all high-quality olive oil has an intense flavor and a high price. But the industry is dedicated to serving the consumer's dream, however unlikely it may be, and has spared no effort in making this one come true. Threpsi is an example of this type of oil. The marketing prose has lots of buzzword tinsel, including small farmers, and 100% Koroneiki olives. A site about olive varieties says Koroneiki has a 'robust, complex flavor profile with dominant notes of freshly cut grass, green banana, and artichoke, balanced by a characteristic pungent, peppery finish.' Does this sound like Threpsi? No, Threpsi is a distant echo of this. How do Koroneiki olives become mild? On the Threspi website (www.threspi.gr) they explain that these olives are very ripe, which 'gives a unique almost-butter feeling body' to the oil. But sites about olive oil quality explain that, while ripe olives increase yield and give a mild flavor profile, they also raise the acid value above the extra-virgin threshold, and decrease shelf life due to the great reduction in polyphenols. These produce the strong taste, but they also give the oil a longer shelf life. Threpsi claims a low free oleic acid value of 0.26 percent, but this is illogical given their statement about ripeness of the olives used. The marketing claims it is extra-virgin, but the flavor profile is way too mild, and the price point way too low, for this to be true. At this point actual extra-virgin oil tends to give out certain types of information to help establish its credentials, such as the harvest date of the olives, the date the oil was produced, and the phenolic content in mg per liter. These are not given for this oil. On the other hand, it is recommended for baking, when extra-virgin oil is never heated that high to preserve the polyphenols. While looking up the Threpsi site something interesting and a little unexpected came up. An American site called Export Hub is brokering bulk Threpsi Organic Extra-Virgin Olive Oil. It's 500 dollars a ton, and the minimum order is 30 tons. It comes in a 1/4 liter pouch, and they say it is designed for cosmetic use. And Threpsi's annual revenue is listed on Export Hub as 1 billion dollars. Is this just possibly a little high? Now let's be fair and expand the frame of reference, because this situation is not limited to Threpsi. A search on Amazon netted 13 different oils from the same country, that make the same extra-virgin claim, in the same ½ liter bottle and a similar price range, although Threpsi is the highest priced. These are: Liokarea, Iliada, Arodama, Kosterina, Kouzini, Gaea, Mr. Papou's, Ariston, Early Harvest, Yanni's, Oilladi, and Wild Greek, and Mythology. And, to continue to be fair, this type of oil and marketing is not limited to Greece. A search with the same parameters for Italian oil netted 21 examples on the first page alone. A search for Spanish oil was more along the lines of Greece in numbers, but with more variety in terms of price structure, bottle size, and type of olive. By the second page, oils from other locations were being included. I'm not going to get into the situation with Morocco, you'd need an atlas to figure that one out. So, over time, for a number of reasons, the originally useful quality designations of first cold-press and extra-virgin became problematic for the industry. As always, the good quality oil stayed at home, and producers figured out a way to market massive amounts of lower quality oil far away from home. At this point they have run the table in the American market, and are lying confidently and routinely about those magical words extra virgin. Yet this situation was created, and enabled, by consumers wanting a product that is doubly impossible: a moderately priced and mild tasting extra-virgin olive oil. Still, higher quality oil does exist. Buyers in America can become more aware with online research about the how fake oil is made on the one hand, and what defines quality oil on the other. And, as always, a sense of humor helps. There are several mild oils with high smoke points that are highly recommended for cooking or baking. With olive oil itself, my experience has been that, for about 2 to 3 times the Threpsi price point, the oil gets pretty good. And that this type of oil is so strong that a little goes a long way.