Tuscan Extra Rare - Citizens of Soil review

This organic, Tuscan olive oil comes in at a polyphenol level of 655 mg/Kg. Oils in this polyphenol level are high enough to provide a beneficial health effect, without too much of the bitter taste that polyphenols are famous for.

If you've not tried a polyphenol oil before—this one is a great one to start with.

Clear of the 500 mg/Kg guideline

Although the main requirement to be classified as a high polyphenol oil is to reach 250 mg/Kg many experts in the field prefer recommending oils with 500 mg/Kg+. The reason for this is polyphenols naturally decline over time, even when stored in darkness and at a reasonable temperature. Purchasing an oil with an initial polyphenol profile of over 500 mg/Kg provides a nice 'buffer' so your oil can continue to give you health benefits as you use it over a few weeks.

Pouch to Bottle Refills

Citizens of Soil are passionate about regenerative farming and reducing negative impact on the environment. As part of their mission they offer olive oil refills that come in recyclable pouches. This way, once you have used up the oil that comes in your original glass bottle, you can refill it with a pouch. This reduces the number of glass bottles in circulation and the impact that has on the environment. Once you've refilled you can mail the empty pouch back to Citizen's of Soil (they offer free postage for this service) so they can recycle it at a specialist plant.

Taste - blend?

It's easy to think of a blended oil as lower quality. It's true that most of the lower quality oils do opt for a blend. This is for a variety of reasons, but most of them come down to cost, and it's cheaper for low quality producers to blend together a variety of lower quality olives to form their oil. This is not how this oil is made. As we can see from the polyphenol certification/chemical analysis, this oil has great quality metrics. The acidity is low, the peroxide is low and the polyphenols are high. These are all good indicators of a quality new oil. This information tells us that this oil has been blended carefully and purposefully, with only high quality olives. The producers-Candice and Fabrizio even including a note to describe some of the thinking that has gone into the blend:

While Coratina (from Puglia) and Grignano (from the Verona area) are historically used for blending, in our case they play a minor but meaningful role—Coratina adds structure, and Grignano contributes to the aromatics.

This blend has a taste very similar to other high quality, even monocultivar (single-variety) oils. It's a very grassy and herbaceous oil, the tasting notes on the Citizen's website describes a 'clean' peppery taste, and I would agree with this—there is a bitter note on the aftertaste but it is not overpowering in any way.

In conclusion I find this a great oil that could be recommended to polyphenol beginners, especially as a number of people interested to try polyphenols for the first time are looking for something organic. If you'd like to take a closer look at the stats for this oil, you can read more on it's dedicated page here - Tuscan Extra Rare.