Olive Oil 101 Crash Course 🫒 Eat Spain Drink Spain Singapore 2025

Most of us have attended wine tasting, tea tasting, coffee tasting, cheese tasting, even durian tasting, but this was the first time I experienced olive oil tasting, thanks to Eat Spain Drink Spain (ESDS) festival 2025.

Olive Grove owner and olive oil sommelier Yeeling Chok took us on an eye opening olive oil appreciation crash course.

(I know wine sommeliers, even water sommelier, but this was my first time meeting an olive oil sommelier. Grateful for opportunities to expand my horizon everyday! 🕺)

I have been fascinated with olives and olive oil encountered during travel around the Mediterranean long ago but never got down to understanding it properly. So, I was looking forward to today's ESDS event organised by the Commercial & Economic Office at the Embassy of Spain in Singapore.

Antonio Garcia Rebollar Spanish Commercial & Economic Commissioner in Singapore welcome the exhibitors and olive oil tasting participants.

During the tasting, we had the privilege to try out seven different olive oils from Spain 💃

Spain is the world's olive Superpower 💪

23% of the world's olive groves are in Spain.

Spain has 2.8 million hectares of olive groves which amounts to land nearly 40 times the size of Singapore dedicated to growing olives 😲

Spain is the world's largest producer of olive oil by far.

At 1.2 million tonnes in 2024-25 , Spain produced more olive oil by a wide margin than Italy and Greece, the second and third largest olive oil producers combined.

Most of Spain's olive groves are located in the regions of Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura and Catalonia.

There are over 1,000 olive varietals in the world, 260 in Spain alone. For this crash course, we focussed on just two, the most often encountered ones - Picual and Arbequina. Picual is the most common varietal, making up 50% of Spain's production.

Okay, let the olive oil flow! 🫒

When tasting olive oil, look out for three attributes - fruitiness, bitterness and pungency.

For Picual, we tasted Dominus Early Harvest Spanish Extra Virgin Olive Oil imported and distributed by Isle Grocer.

On the nose, Picual typically has an intense green fruitiness, notes of plants and herbs - like fresh cut-grass or leaves or tomato stems. Our experiences are subjective, for me, I also discerned the type of fragrance we get when we bite into a fresh guava (one of my favourite fruits).

Minty green taste on entry, medium bitterness sometimes astringent (siap siap in Hokkien / Teochew 涩 ).

Long persistent, medium pungency (hiam 辣 in Hokkien / Teochew) in the aftertaste that may be choking when tasted neat. Well, I did choked and coughed 🤭😝

(But, when rolled and tossed with food like salads, the pungency is moderated and heightens our awareness of flavours, so making everything tastes better.)

Picual is high in polyphenols which are anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and thus good for heart health.

Arbequina olive oil typically smells green, with medium fruitiness like green apple, artichoke and also almond (Cantonese almond paste 杏仁糊 that kind of smell). Sweet on the palate, no bitterness with subtle pungency which is moderately persistent. Also has wide range of healthful polyphenols.

For Arbequina, we tasted Vianoleo Extra Virgin White made with a blend of 75% Arbequina and 25% Manzanilla Cacereña olives.

Smells sweet, delicate and fragrant with fruity aromas of grass, apple, banana, tomato. Sweet on the palate with low bitterness and a subtle presence of spiciness.

Once we were briefed on the basics, Yeeling let us loose on the exhibitors excited to taste the olive oils equipped with our newly acquired knowledge.

Scan the QR code for the list of exhibitors and olive oils we tasted.

It's such a smart move to pique our curiousity and motivate us to discover on our own the fascinating world of olive oils. This was just the beginning, the baby steps of a lifelong journey for new olive oil devotees.