I Joined an Olive Oil Club to Get a $39 Artisanal Oil for $1. Here’s My Review…

by Kim Moody
February 5, 2018

My mom didn’t use much olive oil when I was growing up in Indiana. We were a “butter and Crisco” family.

Later, when I started cooking for my own family, I read about the many health benefits of olive oil and started using it on quite a few dishes. I’d always assumed that all olive oils were pretty much alike. Whenever I needed some, I’d just choose a bottle with an attractive label and place it in my shopping cart.

But all that changed, and now I’ll never buy supermarket olive oil again. Here’s the story…

Nutrition and fitness are my life’s passions. About three years ago, I was working as a personal trainer at a CrossFit gym in Asheville, North Carolina.

A fellow named T. J. Robinson signed up for one of our intense, five-week boot camp classes. At first, he wasn’t overly fond of the vigorous exercises we paced the class through. But he kept coming back, mainly I think because he had his eye on an attractive woman in the class named Meghan. Sure enough, in time they became a couple.

Anyway, on graduation day from boot camp, in appreciation for getting him into shape, T. J. gave an unusual gift to each of the gym’s four personal trainers, including me. It was a very special bottle of olive oil from a club that he founded called the Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club.

T. J. said that his club’s olive oils are much different from those in any supermarket. That’s because they are fresh-pressed olive oils.

T. J. explained that four times a year, he and his team of professional olive oil experts travel to the latest olive harvests around the world. They visit the top-rated artisanal farms in each region and pick out the most flavorful extra virgin olive oils of the new harvest. And then the race is on, as T. J. rushes this fresh “liquid gold” direct to his club members in America by jet plane and special delivery truck.

“Why the big rush?” one of us asked

T. J. replied that freshness is so critical to olive oil flavor and nutritional potency because the olive is a fruit. Just as with other fruit juices, olive oil tastes so much better fresh-squeezed. That’s why, for example, fresh-squeezed orange juice tastes so much better than juice made from concentrate. Problem is, you just can’t find fresh-pressed olive oil in stores, where bottles sit on the shelf for many months, growing staler by the week and eventually rancid.

“You’ll taste the fresh-pressed difference right away,” T. J. promised.

My first taste

I was intrigued. That evening I broke the seal on the bottle, removed the cap, and immediately smelled the oil’s fresh herbal aroma. I poured a teaspoon, and the taste was just what T. J. promised—alive and potent and as complex as a fine wine. It was like a garden in a bottle, with wave after wave of fresh flavor. It was like no other olive oil I’d ever tasted—honestly, like no other food I’d ever tasted—and I couldn’t wait to drizzle some on my favorite dishes.

It was one of the most vivid tasting experiences of my life. It was like tasting a freshly-picked, luscious, field-ripened tomato instead of a pale, muted, cardboard-y tomato from a grocery store. Over the next few days, I tried it on a wide variety of dishes. In every instance, the taste was extraordinary. From that first experience of fresh-pressed olive oil, I knew that store-bought olive oils would never again have the same appeal to me.

But as much as I loved his oil, I was wary of joining T.J.'s club

I don’t like clubs because they normally require you to make a minimum number of purchases. So, I felt conflicted, because T. J.’s olive oil had spoiled me for supermarket oil. I went online to check out his club’s deal.

I was delighted to find that T. J.’s welcome offer is more than fair…

As an introductory, “try-it-yourself-and-then-decide” offer, I would receive a $39 bottle for just $1 (to help cover shipping), with no commitment to buy anything, now or ever

I especially liked the “no obligation to buy anything” part. Since T. J. believes his olive oil sells itself when people taste it, he’s eliminated the usual objections people have about a club and made it super-easy for anyone to try his fresh-pressed olive oil.

I figured, what’s to lose? I joined. My $39-Bottle-for-a-Buck arrived in about a week. It was every bit as delicious as the first one he gave me at the gym. And so has every bottle he’s sent since. Moreover, every oil is unique, hand-selected by T. J. and just pressed at the latest harvest.

A busy mom’s simple “big three” method for easier, more nutritious meal planning

I’ve been a club member for three years now. The oils he sends me are always shipped in BPA-free glass bottles with beautiful labels. The oils are always divine. But most important, T. J.’s fresh-pressed olive oils have made nutritious meal planning so much easier for me. Here’s why I say that…

As a busy working mom, I like to enjoy—and feed my family—meals that are easy to prepare, highly nutritious, but also really delicious.

Tall order? Not so much when you keep it simple with this “big three” method of meal planning. That is, I plan every meal around three core components I consider essential—veggies, a protein, and a healthy fat.

The veggies and protein can be anything you want. For me, the fresh-pressed olive oil is the critical third component.

It’s so versatile. As any chef will tell you, fat is where the flavor is. The fresh olive oil gives me such an easy way to make my other two meal components—the veggies and protein—so much more delicious. It’s more of an all-natural, freshly-made sauce, or condiment, than what you’d normally think of as an “oil.” My husband, Tom, for example, drizzles it over his steak, fish, and salads. And my two sons are willing to try more veggies, thanks to the tasty olive oil “topping” they like with a pinch of sea salt.

T. J.’s olive oil makes every meal more nutritious, too, because it’s brimming with the polyphenols, antioxidants, essential fats, and other health-promoting nutrients that olive oil is famous for. What most people don’t realize is that olive oil’s super-healthy nutrients are at their peak when the oil is fresh-pressed. But then these nutrients degrade rapidly after six months of sitting on store shelves and eventually disappear. So you get much more nutrition from Mother Nature’s garden when you get your olive oil fresh.

We’re so hooked on T. J.’s fresh-pressed olive oil, we even pack a bottle when we go on vacation

Once a year, we drive up to Ocean City, New Jersey, and rent a house near the beach with other family members. We do our own cooking, and our other family members rave about the oil, too.

I suppose it’s something of a luxury to have an olive oil expert like T. J. search the world on my behalf for the finest artisanal olive oils at harvest time. But it’s a small luxury I’ve come to love. I feel that I and my family deserve it. It makes mealtimes more enjoyable and nutritious for our whole family. Meal prep has become much easier for me. T. J. spares me the confusion about which olive oils to buy. And it’s so convenient. The olive oil arrives at my front door straight from the new harvest, so it’s one less thing I have to shop for.

The club's Pressing Report enhances your enjoyment and appreciation of the world's finest artisanal olive oils

With every olive oil you receive an in-depth Pressing Report. In beautiful words and photos, it introduces you to the award-winning family farmers whose labors of love create these oils. Reading the Pressing Report and then savoring each oil educates your palate as no other method can. In no time, you’re an expert who knows how to identify truly great olive oil. You also discover how to pair the right oil with each recipe to bring out maximum flavor in every dish.

And one more thing I like about the Pressing Report. T. J., a former professional chef, shares the best recipes from great chefs he meets on his globetrotting olive oil hunts. The recipes are all so easy, using ingredients you’ll find anywhere. They take your cooking to new heights.

For just $1, it’s certainly worth a try

I wish more companies would offer excellent regular-size products to try for just $1. It’s really fair when you can decide for yourself if it’s for you. So many people have liked this "try-it-and-then-decide" offer that T. J.'s club is now the fastest growing olive oil club in America.

With T. J.’s offer, the worst that will happen is that you’ll get $39 worth of fresh-pressed artisanal olive oil for $1 and never have to buy anything else at all.

T. J. doesn’t sell olive oil in stores, nor does he make this offer year-round, only after the new harvest is in. His latest oils recently arrived from the new Italian and Greek harvest. If you want to accept his “$39-Bottle-for-a-Buck” so you can taste it and decide for yourself, you can check out his generous deal here:

Try T. J. Robinson’s $39-Bottle-for-a-Buck Offer