Aside from looking visually pleasing as a pair, there are key differences between our white "Original" and blue "Everyday" extra virgin olive oil.
The main difference in the products is their harvest date. Our Original Extra Virgin Olive Oil is harvested slightly earlier in the season, which means more robust flavor at a higher cost. This post will breakdown what these differences mean for how to use them and why each of them play an equally important part of elevating your dishes, both their flavor profile and level of healthiness.
So why is one bottle more expensive than the other?
When you harvest an olive early – which means that you take it off the tree before it’s ripe, while it’s still green – you preserve the natural polyphenol or antioxidant content in that olive. BUT, not very much olive juice comes out. (It takes literally 12 pounds of olives to make every bottle of our Original EVOO). There is much less “yield” from an early harvest olive. A ripe black olive, on the other hand, will give you a lot more juice from the squeeze; though, while it allows for a larger volume of oil (and therefore a less expensive product), it doesn't have the same flavor and health benefits as Kosterina's early harvest EVOO.
While our Original Extra Virgin Olive Oil (white bottle) has 638 mg/kg of polyphenol content (as measured at the time of harvest), our Organic Everyday Extra Virgin Olive Oil (blue bottle) clocks in at 400 mg/kg (still far above the typical grocery store oil) which allows us to offer it at a lower price.
The Everyday is aromatic and flavorful but will not overpower your food and stands up to heat beautifully. Crafted with cooks in mind and with a price point of $19.95 (compared to our Original EVOO at $29.95) you can use it on every meal and feel good about it.
Both our Original Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Everyday EVOO are harvested far earlier than anything you will find in grocery stores, however we chose to harvest our Everyday EVOO slightly later than our Original which allows us to offer it at a lower price point.
How do the Original and Everyday EVOO taste different?
Polyphenols, known as incredibly healthy antioxidants, exist at a higher concentration when olives are harvested early. In addition to the health benefits they bring, polyphenols are what give extra virgin olive oil such a natural peppery flavor. As our earliest harvest EVOO, our Original EVOO has more robust flavor, while our Everyday is more subtle.
How should I use each bottle?
Our recommendation is that you use our highly aromatic and intensely flavorful Original EVOO for salads, drizzling, dipping, and finishing. And the Everyday should be used for cooking, roasting, sautéing, grilling and baking. The blue bottle lives next to your stove. The white bottle lives on your kitchen table.
More about the science behind cooking with olive oil here. (Kosterina tip: Please never cook or bake with canola or vegetable oil again. They can potentially be quite toxic to the body. Plus they are tasteless.) Read here to learn more about the toxic truth of other cooking oils.
