About Tasted & Ranked

We are not sommeliers, chefs or importers. We are a small group of food-obsessed friends who got into the habit, years ago, of bringing a bottle of olive oil back from every trip: estates in Andalusia, co-ops in Crete, a farm shop in Istria, a market stall in Puglia, airport duty-frees we would rather forget.

Somewhere along the way we learned the expensive lesson this site is built on: price and quality are only loosely related. We have drunk $100 oils that tasted of cardboard and $9 oils that stopped conversation at the table. Once you have been burned like that a few times, you start writing things down.

How this site happened

We never intended to run a review site. The tasting notes lived in a spreadsheet. Friends kept asking for the spreadsheet, so it became a group email. The group email got forwarded to people we had never met, so it became this page. What you read here is that spreadsheet, done properly: bottles bought at retail under a plain name, tasted blind in numbered glasses, scored the same way every time.

How we test

Every oil in a ranking goes through the same three blind rounds: neat from a warmed glass the way professional graders taste, on warm bread, and in a tomato salad where the oil has to carry the plate. Alongside the tasting we log what each producer actually publishes: harvest date, tree-to-press time, acidity, polyphenol figures, packaging and estate traceability. Scores weight taste first, then freshness, polyphenols, provenance and value. Oils that arrive stale, fail the first round or have no verifiable price are cut entirely.

How we make money

Some links on this site earn us a commission, and some featured brands sponsor our work. That funding keeps the site running, but it does not write the reviews: no one can buy a place on a list or a score, and the most expensive bottle in our current test finished last. You can read the full detail on our disclosure page.

Get in touch

Spotted an error, tried an oil and disagree, or think a bottle deserves a place in next year's test? Email us at hello@tastedandranked.com. We read everything and publish a selection of letters with each update, including the ones that tell us we are wrong.