Twelve olive varieties, and what each one tastes like

1. Why variety matters

Plant a Picual and an Arbequina in the same grove, pick them the same morning and run them through the same mill, and you will get two oils that could be from different continents — one bitter, tomato-leaf and tenacious, the other soft, apple-and-almond and gone in a year. The variety sets the ceiling on polyphenols, the fatty-acid balance that decides how long the oil lasts, and the aromatic family. Everything the grower and the miller do is adjustment inside those limits.

The figures below are ranges published for each variety in the agronomic literature and on the cultivar pages of this site. They are what the variety tends to do, not measurements of any bottle: an individual oil’s number is on its own page, with who measured it.

2. The robust ones

Picual, from Jaén, is the most planted olive in the world and the backbone of Andalusian oil: 78–81% oleic acid, 300–700 mg/kg polyphenols typical, tomato leaf and fig leaf, firmly bitter, built to last. Coratina, from Corato in Puglia, is Italy’s equivalent — green almond and artichoke with a bitterness that producers now put on the label as a virtue, 330–410 mg/kg measured at bottling in trials and far higher when picked green. Koroneiki, half of Greece’s olive area, gives a smaller, peppery, grassy oil with a persistent finish and keeps well. Tsounati, the old variety of western Crete, surveys at 173–641 mg/kg and gives something nuttier and softer than Koroneiki when picked early. Hojiblanca swings widest with the season, 280–820 mg/kg, falling as the fruit ripens.

3. The middle

Frantoio is the Tuscan workhorse: grassy, artichoke, a clean pepper, about 76% oleic and 230 mg/kg in a like-for-like trial, higher from the hills. Memecik, from Muğla on the Turkish south Aegean, measures 296–407 mg/kg total phenols and gives a green, herbal oil with real bite when picked in September. Nocellara del Belìce, Sicily’s table olive turned oil olive, means 330 mg/kg across 125 samples and tastes of tomato and green herbs. Ayvalık, the Edremit Gulf’s variety, is softer — 70–72% oleic, fruity, almond — and Türkiye’s most medalled.

4. The delicate ones

Arbequina, from Les Garrigues in Catalonia and now planted worldwide, is sweet, apple, green banana and almond, 200–230 mg/kg typical and 70–75% oleic — easy to like, quick to fade. Taggiasca, Liguria’s small olive, is the mildest serious oil in Italy: ripe, buttery, pine-nut, meant for fish and the Ligurian table. Manaki, the olive of Corinthia and the Argolid, has the lowest oleic share of the Greek varieties and the highest linoleic, which makes a soft, aromatic oil that does not keep as long as Koroneiki and is almost unknown outside Greece.

Delicate is not lesser. It is a different job: fish, salad, a light hand.

5. The table

Published ranges for the variety, as cited on each cultivar page. Not measurements of any oil — those are on the oil pages, with their source.