When an olive oil scratches lightly in the throat and tastes bitter, small molecules are responsible: polyphenols. They are the olive’s natural antioxidants — the substances the fruit uses to protect itself.
In the oil they do two things: they shape the flavour, and they make the oil keep longer, because they guard it against turning rancid.
Where they come from
The level hangs on a few decisions: harvest early, while the olives are still green, press quickly and do it cold. Every day, every degree of warmth costs polyphenols.
Our two oils show what that means: Nobile sits at 344 mg/kg, Intenso at 697 mg/kg — the latter an unusually dense pressing, because its olives are picked especially early.
And health?
Polyphenols have long held the interest of nutrition research — for instance within large studies on the Mediterranean diet such as PREDIMED. For olive-oil polyphenols, the EU permits exactly one health-related statement: that they “contribute to the protection of blood lipids from oxidative stress” — with a daily intake of 5 mg of hydroxytyrosol and its derivatives from 20 g of olive oil.
No serious producer promises more. For us it is the flavour that comes first anyway — the density, the scratch, the finish. The rest is a pleasant aside.