Good olive oil?

[TreasureoftheSierraMadre]

I promised myself that when the new kitchen was finished I would buy good quality staples.

What olive oil can you recommend? I need some milder stuff for cooking and some extra virgin.

I prefer the grassier flavoured stuff, not the medicinal tasting stuff. I usually shop at Sainsburys, but can get to Tesco and Waitrose as well.

I love Carbonell olive oil as an extra virgin. I used to use it living in Spain and love it.

Lidl's Primadonna is lovely: Angela Hartnett thinks so too. And it's reasonably priced.

Yes Aldi have a good one thats a good price. Some in the major supermarkets seem old and horrible. I also have a spray one from ALdi thats handy for frying.

Ditto Aldi. For standard supermarket EVOO I like Fillipe Berio. For mild olive oil that I use for frying the taste isn't so important because you can't really taste it in the finished dish anyway so I buy whatever is cheapest.

I agree with the Lidl offering, far nicer than the shite they sell in tiny bottles in Sainsburys.

According to a Which? taste test they rated Napolina EVOO (not the more expensive Napolina Special Selection) and Aldi EVOO as the best widely available extra virgin olive oils.

I always get one that says 'mechanically extracted' on the bottle. It sounds awful but the alternative is solvent extraction. It never says 'solvent extraction' on the bottle.

That's interesting about the extraction goodasgold I didn't know that. I'm surprised that no one has suggested the Sainsbos organic extra virgin. We always buy organic and this is the cheapest I've ever seen it's also a good flavour. Perhaps you do need to go to a big S.Bs for it. Why do we buy organic?
This is a true story about my cousin who's married to a Greek olive farmer they spray their olives after it rains (EVERY TIME) apart from the olives growing nearest their house which they keep for themselves !!