Organic Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Clearspring Organic Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil is made using premium quality organic Italian olives. The olives are milled within 48 hours of harvesting to produce this cold extracted superior category olive oil. Rich in Vitamin E, our 100% Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil is incredibly versatile. It is perfect with bruschetta, tomato salads and Mediterranean roasted vegetables. You can also use it for sauteing, frying and baking!

• Unrefined cold extracted extra virgin olive oil
• Rich in Vitamin E
• High in monounsaturated fat
• Very versatile

How it is made?

In late autumn our Italian olives are slowly shaken from their branches using a machine, also known as the ‘scuotitura’ method, which minimises the impact on wildlife, especially nesting and sleeping birds.

Once harvested the oil is made using a cold extraction method, which is when the olives are simply pressed mechanically without external sources of heat or chemicals applied to the process. The cold extraction method allows the oil to retain more of its flavour and nutritional value creating a much higher quality product.

Once the oil is extracted from the raw ingredient, it needs to be further processed to remove any residual particles that might be left from the extraction process. Oils will fall into two categories at this stage: refined and unrefined. Like the pressing process, heat is one of the key elements which defines the method. Refined oils are subjected to heat pressure at this stage. Unrefined oil, such as our Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil, is processed much more gently using filters rather than heat after extraction. Like cold pressing, this helps the oil retain more of its flavour and nutritional properties, which would otherwise be degraded with the application of external heat.

Virgin vs Extra Virgin Olive Oil

There is one key difference between extra virgin and virgin olive oil: acidity level. If the oil has an acidity level less than or equal to 0.8%, it is classified as extra virgin. If the oil has an acidity level between 0.8% and 2%, it is graded as just virgin. Any olive oil with an acidity level above this is falls into the conventional olive oil varieties.