The best olive oils for Mediterranean feasts

Cookery writer Elizabeth David is widely credited with awakening Britain’s appetite for more adventurous, flavoursome dishes with her seminal work A Book of Mediterranean Food, published in 1950. At a time when wartime rationing was still in place, the book offered a vivid celebration of exotic, sun-drenched cuisine, with recipes that paid little heed to the strict couponing of the era.

More than a cookbook, it offered readers hope and escapism, drawing on David’s travels through Italy, France, the Greek islands and Egypt. The book was peppered with anecdotes from literary heroes such as Henry James and D. H. Lawrence and illustrated by John Minton. Perhaps most surprisingly, the book introduced British readers to olive oil, then seen as something of a medicinal oddity, more likely to be found in a chemist’s shop as a cure for earache than in the kitchen.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when olive oil crossed over into everyday British cooking, though the explosion of televised cookery shows in the 1990s, celebrating new cuisines and Mediterranean flavours, certainly played a big role. Since then, cooking oils have poured onto the market, evolving into a competitive cooking category. All have been scrutinised for their health benefits, with those high in saturated fats, such as coconut and palm oil, widely considered the least favourable because of their association with heart disease.

The clear standout has been olive oil. According to a recent survey by Statista, by 2024, the UK’s appetite for olive oil had grown to the point where imports were worth £442 million, up more than £100 million on the previous year, a jump of almost a third in just twelve months.

Most holistic of all is specifically extra virgin olive oil, consistently hailed as a superfood. Although all olive oils are high in unsaturated fats known to reduce 'bad' cholesterol, this distinction matters. The purer the olive ‘juice’, cold-pressed from a single source and bottled quickly, the richer it is in polyphenols. These micronutrients are the real magic of extra virgin olive oil, widely praised in medical research for their anti-inflammatory and anti-ageing properties.

According to the Office for National Statistics, the price of olive oil has almost doubled since the end of 2021, reflecting a drop in production across Mediterranean countries as growers grapple with drought, extreme heat and outbreaks of plant disease. Yet, as so often happens, pressure has sparked opportunity and creativity. A growing number of producers, both established and emerging, are placing greater emphasis on organic practices, thoughtful sourcing, and a more stylish, design-led approach to olive oil.

Leading the pack is Manni, a luxury extra virgin olive oil producer whose olives are grown in the nutrient-rich volcanic soils on the slopes of Mount Amiata in southern Tuscany. What sets Manni apart is its concept of ‘live oil’. Developed in collaboration with the University of Florence and Italy’s National Research Council, the brand uses a patented process which helps preserve freshness, flavour and health benefits for up to two years, no small feat given that oxidation quickly dulls both taste and polyphenols. There’s a lesson here: always keep your extra virgin olive oil in a cool shaded place.

Certified organic and produced in a zero-waste mill operating on circular economy principles, Manni also has pedigree. Founded by Armando Manni in 2001, the brand became an early darling of the culinary world, gaining a celebrity following after its oils were included in the Oscars’ presenter gift bags in 2005 and 2006. Gwyneth Paltrow has raved about it on Goop and it has since remained a favourite among Michelin-starred chefs, from Thomas Keller and Hélène Darroze to Heston Blumenthal and Pierre Gagnaire. "Apart from Harrods in the UK, we do not sell to shops. We supply to chefs and sell through our website because being tight with logistics and transportation is how the olive oil is guaranteed as having the best extra virgin qualities," says Manni.

Manni oils come in sleek black bottles with collectible cap designs. With a look closer to luxury cosmetics, they bring a stylish, minimalist edge to your kitchen shelf.

By contrast, Glug extra virgin olive oils are fun and kitsch. The squeezy, sauce-style bottles feature playful labels showing two cartoon olives holding hands. While the packaging is deliberately simple, the product itself is high quality: made from single-source Picual olives in Spain, the oil is pressed from tree to juice and bottled in just under four hours.

UK-based Katia El-Fakhri who co-founded the brand with her partner Tom Cohnin, says they started the business in 2023 when they became frustrated by the poor quality of mid-priced supermarket oils, blended and tasteless: "I'm from a Lebanese family and over there olive oil is an everyday essential. We wanted a very high-quality product that you could just easily drizzle on everything that wouldn't cost the earth." Glug's 750ml extra-virgin olive oil is indeed well priced at £16 for 750ml.

"We started nerving out on olive oils, trying different kinds from all over the world. We settled on the Picual olives because they have a lovely strong peppery flavour. The extra virgin olive oils we sell have the harvest date printed on the labels. Harvesters literally go out to the grove, collect the olives, pass them over rotating wheels to naturally remove any sticks stalks and leaves and then crush them to make juice. The taste is fresh and rich which reflects this natural organic process."

Even more niche is Honest Toil, a family-run olive oil producer based in the small town of Kyparissia, in the south-west Peloponnese, Greece. Founded by husband-and-wife duo Tom Woodgate and Juli Laki, the brand is rooted in hands-on production: they own their own groves and harvest the fruit alongside a small team, using the old-fashioned method of manually shaking the olives from the trees with sticks.

“I love the sense of camaraderie with the other growers at the press,” explains Woodgate. “After a day of picking stood there ready with various cups and bottles, held straight under the tap, everyone desperate for their first taste of the new harvest, this almost offensively lurid, neon green oil pumping straight out from the tap. After a day of tickling trees, the pride is real!”

Now sold worldwide and through more than 200 stockists across the UK and Ireland, as well as online, the extra virgin olive oil is extracted the same day at a local press run by a mother-and-son duo. Packaging ranges from a simple 500ml bottle to generous 2, 3 and even 5-litre cans, while the exuberant bespoke artwork is created by emerging artists, including Nottingham-based muralist and author Zen Kay.

Honest Toil prides itself on small-batch yields with exceptionally low acidity, resulting in a wonderfully creamy oil that the founders describe as “grassy, with a peppery bite and a real punch of fresh-cut grass.” Its oils are used in Ottolenghi's restaurants, by Helen Graham of Bubala in London and Rosie Healy of Gloriosa in Glasgow.

Greek olive oil certainly has historical kudos. It was Homer, after all, who famously called it “liquid gold”, writing of Odysseus bathing in it to restore and rejuvenate himself. According to the European Court of Auditors, Greece is actually the third-largest producer of olive oil in the European Union, producing around 259,000 tonnes between 2019 and 2024. This places it just behind Italy, which produced 284,000 tonnes over the same period, and far behind Spain, whose output exceeded one million tonnes. However, Greece stands apart for the unusually high proportion of its olive oil produced as extra virgin.

Bringing cheer to luxury deli shelves is Yiayia and Friends, an extra virgin olive oil brand (also sold online) recognised for its colourful bottles, decorated with cartoon eyes, playful hearts and jolly faces, including a grey-haired cartoon figure, a reference to the Greek word ‘yiayia’, meaning ‘grandma’. Founded in 2017, Yiayia and Friends is the brainchild of Beetroot, a collective of creatives lauded for their striking design work. In 2023, four partners were elected to the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI), which brings together the world’s leading graphic designers. With clients including The Design Museum and Monocle, it’s no wonder Yiayia and Friends has become a favourite among stylish cooks.

The oils are crafted from sustainably grown and manually harvested Koroneiki olives which are high in polyphenols and have a tangy peppery flavour. Carving a niche for itself in a busy market, the brand also produces high-quality infused oils. The standout, according to Marketing & Brand Manager Philipp Hieslmair is the lemon extra virgin olive oil. "Unlike conventional infused oils, the lemons are pressed together with the olives, rather than added afterwards. This method creates a naturally integrated flavour that's fresh, aromatic, and exceptionally vibrant," he explains. "Besides special editions [ like Santa-themed bottles at Christmas and pink/red Valentine's Day bottles] it is one of our bestsellers."

For something more leftfield, dressed in seductive packaging, there’s Wonder Valley, a family-owned company based in California founded in 2014 by husband-and-wife team Alison and Jay Carroll. Olive oil harvesting takes place in Lake County, Northern California, a region full of old-growth trees, where the fruit is carefully picked and cold-pressed. They also make cosmetics (also stocked on Goop), with all of the glass bottles decorated with labels showing a nude goddess holding up an olive branch. Flavours are described as having notes of green tea, cut grass, and apricot, finishing with a strong peppery bite. For those who really want to geek out, the polyphenol count is listed too, though without knowing how much degrades over time or what each dose actually does, it’s mostly a novelty.

One thing is certain: whatever your kitchen style, always go for extra virgin. Like a fine wine, the fruit source and production methods matter. So read the fine print; the more information, the better.