The olive oil to buy

I would like to tell you about some olive oil that is so good it is the staple at Elitistreview Towers; we always feel delighted when we have the chance to use it. ‘So good’ is the prime quality that interests the team here, but speaking for myself, I also have an eye for a bargain. Consequently, I am delighted to tell you the olive oil every lover of properly good things should be hunting down in howling packs costs £5.99 per 500ml bottle at Sainsbury.

It is true, that not so many years ago I raved about something much flasher: Ravida. The thing was, back then it was not so flash. Many years after I started buying it as a seventeen year old going to school in Oxford it still cost £12.99 for a 750ml bottle. That is not so bad for a keen lunatic to use for lubricating most delights without squandering all the Severe Disablement Allowance. It was very good, not the nec ultra plus but good and priced accordingly.

Sadly, news of unbeatable products at good prices spreads like a melanoma to all those who want to price me out of having a tits time of it. Last time I dared go near the burning intensity of the price label on a 500ml bottle of Ravida it was £31.95. Still good oil, for sure, but at that price it is shocking value. The Elitistreview oil purchases were sourced from ever more disparate suppliers, our net cast ever more widely in hope, until about a year ago.

The best affordable olive oil

The Editor, as so often these days, gets the credit for this as it was he who suggested we buy some Sainbury’s Taste The Difference Sicilian olive oil (Val di Mazara DOP) as we desperately needed some olive oil right now and this is seriously the best we can possibly afford, Davy! We bought it, we tasted it again, we tasted it on a selection of artfully chosen breads and, good god, it was lovely!

Now I will be honest and say Sainsbury’s TTD Sicilian olive oil is not, when subjected to fiercely analytical tasting scrutiny, quite as good as Ravida. But you would have to pay more frighteningly close attention than I’m capable of, to notice any qualitative difference when scoffing something as glorious as Isle of Wight tomatoes with oil, salt and pepper. I would happily drink the oil left on the plate, indeed I frequently do, with not a scintilla less pleasure than if it had been my long gone favourite Ravida.

Isle of Wight tomatoes with super olive oil

So, today Elitistreview is not peddling the pointy pinnacle, or even selling the slopes right before it, but rather the flatter bit just before that where the bagpipe player groans and children pose for photographs. However, at £5.99 for 500 ml the view is god-damned picturesque and it’s not as if you escape the bagpipe music even if you pay someone a fortune to carry you the few metres more to the summit.

Get out to your local Sainsbury’s and buy Taste The Difference Sicilian Val di Mazara DOP olive oil, you’ll bloody love us for it! In an act of sheer stupidity we have not arranged any commission from Sainsbury’s for this blog post – even though it’s possibly the most commercial, electric hot tip I’ve ever written…

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