Two kinds of entry
The library holds 117 oils. Some carry a star score out of five; the rest carry a competition placing, such as a rank in the World's Best Olive Oils list. The difference matters. A star score means our panel tasted the oil and scored it. A competition chip means somebody else's panel did, and we are reporting their result with a link to it. We never turn a competition placing into a star score of our own.
The panel and the method
We taste the way competition panels do: a tablespoon in a covered glass warmed in the hand, nosed, then stripped across the palate with air drawn in. We score the three positive attributes — fruitiness, bitterness and pungency — and their balance, and we note defects by name. The method is written up in full in our tasting guide, so you can run the same test at your own table.
Our scores are currently marked provisional on every page that carries one. They come from a small panel tasting known oils, not from a blind flight of the whole library. The full blind round for the 2025/26 harvest is scheduled, and scores will be re-issued from it; until then the word "provisional" stays on the page.
Where the figures come from
Polyphenol and acidity figures on an oil's page are labelled with their source — nearly always the producer's own laboratory report for that harvest. We have not commissioned independent analysis, so the page says "laboratory figures", never "independently verified". Where a producer publishes a bound rather than a figure ("≥ 500 mg/kg"), it is printed as text, not drawn as a bar, because a bar implies a measurement. Where nothing has been published, the page says "Not published" instead of guessing.
A cultivar page prints the polyphenol range published for the variety, and says so. No oil ever borrows that range as its own figure.
Who pays for what
No producer pays to be listed, and we do not accept oils in exchange for coverage. An oil is here because we bought it, or because it placed in a competition we follow.
This site is run by the people behind olijfoliemarkt.nl, an olive oil shop in the Netherlands. Where an oil in the library is sold there, its page says so and links to it, and the strip at the top of every page states the relationship. The score is set before the shop is considered, and oils the shop does not carry are scored in the same way as oils it does — most of the library is not for sale there at all.
Reader reviews
Reader ratings are shown separately from panel scores and are never blended into them. The site does not yet accept reader submissions; the form on each page is there so that when it does, nothing about the layout has to change.
Corrections
If a figure, an award or a producer detail is wrong, tell us and we will correct it and note the correction on the page. Producers are welcome to send us their current lab report for a harvest; we will cite it as theirs.