10/20/2026
Why can good extra virgin olive oil taste bitter or peppery? 🫒
If you've ever tasted a spoonful of robust extra virgin olive oil and felt a little bitterness on your tongue—or a peppery sensation at the back of your throat—you might have wondered whether something was wrong with it.
Quite the opposite can be true.
Bitterness and pungency are recognized positive sensory attributes of extra virgin olive oil. The peppery sensation is associated in part with naturally occurring phenolic compounds, while bitterness is particularly common in oils produced from greener olives.
That's relevant to how we make Kollias.
We harvest our Koroneiki olives early, while they're still green, and our 2025 harvest measured 377 mg/kg polyphenols.
The result isn't an olive oil designed to disappear into the background. It has character: fresh aromas, bitterness and that distinctive peppery finish that so many of our customers mention.
So if Kollias gives you a little tickle in the back of your throat, that's part of what you're tasting.
From our family's grove in Filiatra, Greece. 🇬🇷