Sensory evaluation of Olive Oil, legal requirements and competitive advantages.

Olive oil is undoubtedly a cornerstone of Mediterranean cuisine and culture, as well as being widely considered as a superfood, with multiple beneficial properties now known all over the world.
In recent years, greater attention and sensitivity on the quality and origin of the product has spread. Institutions are increasingly engaged in control activities to guarantee maximum transparency on the origin of the raw material and on the production process.
The olive oil producers themselves are investing more and more to communicate the sensory characteristics of their product to the public, using a vocabulary of terms (fruity, spicy, artichoke-flavoured …) capable of evoking in the consumers the flavours that they will find in the oil or to associate a precise territorial origin.
Such a popular, highly requested and sometimes expensive product is not exempt from fraud attempts, which threaten the unaware consumer. For this reason, bodies such as the EU have prepared over the years standard rules for the classification and marketing of oils, rules that include sensory evaluation, to be carried out through specialized official panels.

In Italy, as in the other EU countries, the EC Regulation 796/2002 is applied to the classification of olive oils. The classification is based on both chemical and sensory analysis of olive oil.
The panel of tasters is made up of 8-10 people who will have to test the samples and give a score for each of the attributes whose presence and intensity is assessed. The attributes are divided into two macro categories: positive and negative (also called defects).
The positive attributes include fruitiness, bitterness and spiciness, while among the negatives the choice of possible defects is wider. They range from rancid, to musty, from winey to metallic, from muddy