Host an Olive Oil Tasting

Ideas for a heart-healthy soiree.

Like wine tastings, olive oil tastings are a wonderful way to find a brand you really like, for there are nearly as many varieties of olive oil as there are of wine.

When Chris Ortiz Temnitzer, president of Oliveoil.com, conducts tastings, it's a highly stylized ritual complete with covered blue glasses (so he's not influenced by the color of the oil and can swirl the oil to release its aroma and warm it), wool cloths (for breathing into to cleanse the nasal "palate"), and apples (for cleansing the other palate). You don't have to be so precise. Although you can find olive oil tasting kits online (www.oliveoilsource.com/taster_case.htm, www.italiancookingandliving.com/store/olive_oils, or www.oakvillegrocery.com), you can do it with a regular glass and, of course, several bottles of quality olive oil. Here's how:

• Start with three or four oils and decant them into small containers. Pour about 2 tablespoons into a small glass. Number the oils or place them on paper mats with numbered circles so that you can easily keep track of them.



• Warm the glass by cupping it and swirling it slightly. Then take a brief sniff to get a first impression, followed by a deeper smell.



• Take in a teaspoonful of the oil, roll it around your mouth, and suck air in through clenched teeth.



• Swallow and wait. You should get the oil's aftertaste in a few seconds.



• Make notes throughout the tasting.



• You're looking for a fruitiness, a "green grass" or "leafy" smell, and also some bitterness. In olive oil, bitterness is good. Ideally, you should get a balanced sensation of fruitiness, bitterness, and pungency, which tells you it's a good oil.



• Among the positive words used to describe olive oil: apple, almond, artichoke, astringent (a puckering sensation), banana, bitter, buttery, fresh, fruity, grass, green, green leaf, harmonious, hay, melon, perfumy, musky, nutty, woody, peppery, pungent, and rotund. Avoid oils that taste briny, burnt, coarse, musty, earthy, flat, or winey.



• In the end, says Temnitzer, what's most important is that you like the oil.

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Touring Ireland's countryside with a group of travel writers, we passed an immaculate cemetery with hundreds of beautiful headstones set in a field of emerald-green grass. Everyone reached for their cameras when the tour guide said the inventor of the crossword puzzle was buried there. He pointed out the location, "Three down and four across."

-- Steve Bauer