Molino y Cata

The 5 best cooperative extra virgin olive oils of 2026, awarded at EVOOLEUM, Mario Solinas, and Jaén Selección. Expert selection by Mercedes Uceda. Buy online.

Only three types of oil are produced at the olive mill: Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Virgin Olive Oil, and Lampante Olive Oil. While the first two are olive juices, bottled and sold to the public, Lampante Olive Oil must be refined and then blended to be sold as "Olive Oil."

 Every year the same story. The harvest season is approaching and nerves are taking over every link in the chain, from the farmer to the consumer. The most common question these days in olive oil shops is "Do you already have oil from this harvest?" And friends, I assure you one thing: when it comes to quality, being first is not the same as being the best. Since 2012, I've been advising olive mills on producing premium extra virgin olive oils, the kind that go into those wonderful bottles we recently started selling at Molino y Cata. Today, reviewing a client's work from 2017 to the present, their premium Picual EVOO (each variety has its own ideal harvest time) has seen the chosen start date fluctuate between October 6th and November 4th. Quite a range, isn't it? Knowing how to choose that perfect moment is where the magic lies, so that later those premium extra virgin olive oils with fruity notes that flood the dishes, complex and above all balanced in bitterness and spiciness, come out. How is that moment chosen? It is a combination of fat yield analysis (to see that there is already oil inside the olive), Maturity Index (a method by which olives are classified according to their color, from green to black) and finally the extraction of the oil and tasting of it, to see if there are already nuances that remind us of the variety or only of green wood, which will indicate that we have to keep waiting. So, at this time of year, for all of us in this industry, and for all of you eagerly awaiting the new harvest, patience is key. Because olive oils speak, they tell stories, and they tell us when their ideal harvest time is. Knowing how to taste and interpret them is essential to avoid falling into the spiral of nerves and, let's be honest, the marketing frenzy of being the first to market. A few minutes of glory that will be quickly forgotten and eclipsed by the quality of those who knew how to listen to what the olive trees were telling him. So, dear olive oil producers, I suppose we will soon have great extra virgin olive oils from early varieties such as Frantoio, Empeltre and Changlot Real, as well as for other varieties like Picual and Hojiblanca… PATIENCE.