Hosting guide·7 min read
How to Host an Olive Oil Tasting at Home: A Simple Guide
To host an olive oil tasting at home, put two to four olive oils on the table with small glasses or cups, plain bread or green apple slices, and water. Taste from the gentlest oil to the boldest, and talk about what everyone notices.
You are having people over, there are a few olive oils in the cupboard, and you suspect they do not all taste the same. They do not. Tasting them side by side before dinner is one of the easiest good ideas a host can have.
It needs almost no setting up, it gives your guests something to do with their hands, and everyone goes home knowing a little more about what they like.
How do you host an olive oil tasting at home?
To host an olive oil tasting at home, set out two to four oils, small cups, plain bread or green apple and water, taste from the gentlest oil to the boldest, and talk about what you notice.
The talking is the part people remember. Someone will say an oil smells like a cut lawn, someone else will say tomato plants, and both are right.
What do you need on the table?
You need very little on the table: the oils, a small glass or cup for each person, something plain to eat between oils, and water.
Any small glasses or cups will do. Plain bread, slices of green apple and a jug of water look after the resetting.
If your guests are the type, add paper and a pen. Writing a word or two for each oil sounds earnest and turns out to be the fun part, especially when you read them back over dinner.
Use whatever oils you have in the cupboard, and ask a friend to bring theirs. One of the oils on the table could be one you can look up. Our own oil comes in a tin. Every KALTA tin carries a BATCH code, and it opens the independent laboratory report for that exact pressing. You can see how that works on the batch report page.
How many oils should you taste, and in what order?
Taste two to four oils, starting with the gentlest and finishing with the boldest, because a bold oil makes the next one taste of nothing.
Two is enough to notice a difference, and four is plenty for a table of friends.
If you do not know which oil is the gentlest, smell them all first. The quiet, soft-smelling ones go to the front of the line; the green, grassy, loud ones go to the back.
Oils differ, and that is the fun of it. Some are gentle and buttery, some are green and bold, and neither is wrong. Olive varieties differ too, and if you are curious about one of them, we have written about what Picual tastes like.
How do you actually taste olive oil?
To taste olive oil, warm the cup in your hands, smell it, take a small sip and draw air through it, then swallow and wait a few seconds for the finish.
Pour a little into each cup. Hold the cup in one palm, cover the top with the other, and swirl it gently. The warmth of your hands lifts the aroma.
Now uncover it, put your nose in and breathe. Say the first thing it reminds you of, out loud, before you talk yourself out of it. Cut grass, tomato leaf, green apple, almond and herbs are all words tasters reach for, and yours might be something else entirely.
Then the slurp. Take a small sip and pull air in through it, noisily, so the oil reaches your whole mouth. It is not elegant, it is funny, and it works. Everyone at the table has to do it, host first.
Swallow, and wait. Bitterness shows on the tongue, and a moment later a peppery catch arrives in the throat. Somebody will cough. That is part of it.
Each step has one thing to do and one thing to notice: warming wakes the oil up, smelling gives you the aroma, sipping brings fruit and then bitterness, and swallowing brings the peppery catch.
| The step | What you do | What to notice |
|---|---|---|
| Warm | Cup it in your hands, cover, swirl | Nothing yet; you are waking it up |
| Smell | Uncover it and breathe in | Grass, tomato leaf, apple, almond |
| Sip | A small sip, then draw air through it | Fruit first, then bitterness |
| Swallow | Swallow and wait a few seconds | A peppery catch in the throat |
Is it normal for a good olive oil to catch at the back of your throat?
Yes — it is normal for a good extra virgin olive oil to catch at the back of your throat, and tasters count that peppery finish among an oil's good qualities, alongside fruitiness and a little bitterness.
You may have heard the opposite: that a good oil should go down smoothly, and that a scratch in the throat means something has gone wrong. At a tasting table it is the other way around. A cough from a peppery oil is a compliment, not a fault.
It helps to look for two things separately. Bitterness shows on the tongue. The peppery catch arrives in the throat, a moment after you swallow.
None of this makes a bold oil right and a gentle oil wrong. Some oils are soft and buttery and barely catch at all, and plenty of people like them best. The point of a tasting is to find out which you like. What it cannot do is settle whether an oil is genuine; for that, read how to tell if olive oil is fake or real.
What should you serve with it afterwards?
Serve dinner: once the tasting is done, the oils go onto the food, and the table decides which oil it liked on which dish.
Put the oils in the middle of the table with whatever you were going to serve anyway. On a table in Dubai tonight that might be warm bread, tomatoes with salt, a bowl of labneh, grilled fish or a pot of beans. Let people pour for themselves and argue about it.
The favourite from the cup is not always the favourite on the plate. The bold oil that made everyone cough can be lovely over beans or tomatoes, and the gentle one may be exactly what the fish wanted.
When the plates are cleared, the oils go back in the cupboard. Looking after them between dinners is its own subject, and we cover it in how to store olive oil in a hot climate.
Who this is not for
- Someone trying to work out whether an oil is genuine. A tasting at home is for pleasure, and it will not settle that question; our guide to telling real olive oil from fake is the place for it.
- Someone training for a formal tasting panel. Panels work blind, to a protocol, with trained tasters. This guide is for a table of friends.
- Someone who wants a neutral oil that stays in the background. A perfectly reasonable thing to want, and those oils are not much fun to taste side by side.
The short version
Set out two to four oils, small cups, plain bread or green apple, and water, and taste from the gentlest oil to the boldest: warm the cup, smell, slurp, swallow and wait. Expect a little bitterness and a peppery catch, and take the cough as a compliment. Then put the oils on the dinner table and let everyone find a favourite. And if you are the guest next time, here is what to bring to a dinner party in Dubai.