Hello! I just got my first bottle within the past week or so, and my wife immediately set up a double-blind taste test for me (using numbers hidden under each plate to identify which was which). She bakes fresh artisanal breads whenever she has a snow day (she’s a teacher), and we wanted to see how four different olive oils might compete against one another by dipping the fresh-baked bread in each of the four oils. These oils were all labeled as EVOO, and all were well within their “consume by” dates. The four were a big ol’ jug from Costco, Bragg (Greece), Thrive (Italy), and the Pruneti (Tuscan blend), from the Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club. I was actually blindfolded, so I couldn’t even see what difference there might be in color, consistency, etc. We added nothing, not even salt, to the oils or the bread before tasting.
I expected to not really be able to tell much difference, as I’m no connoisseur, and also because I’ve heard that even experts perform miserably on double-blind taste tests, rarely able to distinguish super-gourmet from run-of-the-mill, whether for wine, olive oil, or anything else. The first one I tried was very good, the second was a bit more bland but still good, and the third indistinguishable from the second. Then the fourth one blew my mind with how much better it was than all of the others, and in fact better than any I’ve ever tasted—and I’ve lived in Spain and traveled extensively in olive-growing regions in Italy. We had basically expected a 3-way tie for first between Bragg, Thrive, and the Fresh-Pressed oil, with the Costco far behind, but instead we had one oil far ahead, with the other three far behind.
Well, it turned out that the stellar one was in fact the Pruneti, the Bragg placed a distant second, and quite surprisingly, Thrive was indistinguishable from the Costco. So, very nicely done—we’re excited to be new club members, and look forward to the next shipment!