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Last year I learned the most important secret to shopping for extra virgin olive oil.
Here it is:
Olive oil, unlike wine, does not get better with age. Just the opposite. More like fresh juice, olive oil is at its very best (maximum flavor and nutritional value) right after being pressed.
But go check out the label on the olive oil in your pantry or at the grocery store, and you'll see a huge problem:
You won't find a harvest date on any of them.
An expiration date, maybe, but no harvest date.
Why?
Olive oil marketers purposely omit putting the harvest date on their labels because they don't want you to know how old—and therefore stale—their olive oil is.
Sadly, almost no genuine fresh-pressed olive oil ever makes it to our shores.
The vast majority of olive oil sold in the US gets shipped many months (or even a year!) after pressing—and it travels by molasses-slow cargo ships.
As a result, EVOO's fresh, bright, harvest-fresh flavor and nutritional goodness are greatly diminished by the time it reaches your local store. And then it may languish for additional months on store shelves, losing even more flavor and nutrition.
Many gourmet chefs and savvy foodies know this secret (and now you do, too). So they don't waste their money on this stale store-bought stuff.
Instead, they've discovered a super-convenient and affordable way to bring the freshest-pressed EVOO into their kitchens—thanks to one remarkable man...
Meet T.J. Robinson, ''The Olive Oil Hunter"
A one-time gourmet food writer/editor, T.J. came up with idea of hunting for the world's best, freshest boutique EVOOs—and flying them directly to the kitchens of America's top gourmet chefs and passionate foodiesimmediately after they're pressed.
When he heard about my website, he sent me three of his new oils fresh from the harvest for a taste test. (Keep reading to see how you can get a bottle of this amazing EVOO, too, for just $1.)
But back to the taste test...
I loved the rich complexity... the deep green color... and the bright, sunny flavors. They were grassy, herby, fruity, and intense—all at the same time, just like a complex wine.
This was the real McCoy EVOO you only get in the best European restaurants and the back-road bistros around the Mediterranean.
And then came the oil's remarkable finish: a distinct "pepperiness" at back of the throat upon swallowing, the hallmark of the very freshest oil.
(This peppery tang is due to the oleocanthal, the inflammation-fighting component that begins to disappear six months after pressing. It's a good indicator of how fresh and healing the EVOO you're currently using is.)
In short, this olive oil tasted alive!
Compared to T.J.'s samples, store-bought EVOOs are flat, oily, and just… dead.
Why the Difference?
Not only are T.J.'s olive oils so much fresher, they're also produced with devoted care on small family farms.
As with fine wine, variations in sun and soil bring out different flavors in the olives. When they are perfectly ripe, farmers pick the olives at the moment of peak flavor and nutritional value, and the oil is made on site in small batches.
(Given the fantastic flavor, it's no wonder these farmers throw yearly "harvest parties" after the oil is pressed—and take great pride in having their EVOO judged among the oils of their peers.)
And then this liquid gold is immediately bottled and shipped to members of T.J.'s Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club.
Compare this with corporate farms that don't bother to pick their olives—they just let them fall to the ground. Then they ship the olives to a pressing factory, where they are combined with olives from other areas and all pressed together, muddying the flavors. Sometimes heat is used to extract even more oil, which damages it and makes it rancid sooner. That oil sits in bottles, sometimes for years, before it finds its way to your kitchen.
After one taste of T.J.'s fine oils, it's impossible to settle for this inferior junk again. Trust me!
Now for that $1 Retail-Sized Sample Bottle I Promised You...
T.J.'s company is the sole distributor of these fresh-pressed oils in the US. Each one of them is independently lab certified to be 100% pure extra virgin olive oil.
I want to introduce you to this Club and let you taste for yourself how superior these boutique EVOOs are. T.J. is willing to send you a complimentary retail-sized bottle (value: $39)—all he requests is $1 to help cover shipping and handling.
How awesome is that?!
When you join the Club, there's no obligation to buy anything, now or ever.
But there is one little catch:
Because the best EVOO comes from small, boutique growers, T.J. hasonly 240 complimentary bottles reserved for my readers.
So if you want to snag one, I urge you to be quick! You don't want to miss out on this oil.
When they're gone, they're gone. This offer expires Friday, November 4.
To your best health,
Elizabeth
PS: This is a limited offer -- only 240 bottles are available to give away. This olive oil is seriously the best I've ever tasted, and I love knowing it's the highest quality and super fresh. :)
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