FAQs

Debunking myths and misconceptions

1Can I use your oil for deep frying?
Absolutely, but it’s a bit of overkill. It’s like driving your kids to school in a Ferrari; it’s doable but probably doesn’t make a lot of sense. You will be using a premium product for a cooking process that doesn’t require much. Better save the good stuff for when you want to take your cooking to a different level. But that’s just us.
2Why do you package your oil in glass instead of plastic bottles?
Well, we’ll let you answer this one yourself. Do you prefer beer from a glass bottle or a plastic one? How about wine? Does it taste better from a glass bottle sealed with a cork, or from a plastic jug? Don’t get us wrong, PET plastic bottles are useful but usually for less delicate products (think milk). When you are dealing with premium foods like EVOO, you want your container to be of the highest quality so that it won’t impart any smell or odor into the oil. Transferring the oil to plastic squeeze bottles at your kitchen where the oil will be used up relatively fast is OK but bottling the oil into a plastic bottle straight from the mill and then transporting it and storing it under volatile conditions and exposure in temperature variations can cause chemical reactions with the plastic container and potentially the release of microplastics to the actual contents. If this is something that you are into, hey, be our guest. We’d rather use food-grade, UV coated glass bottles. A premium container for a premium product.
3Your organic oil is very sharp, what’s up with that?
What you call “sharp” is actually the presence of polyphenols in the oil itself. You can read more about polyphenols here, but in a nutshell their presence is a good thing for your health. And that “bitterness” that comes with it is actually an acquired taste. This is also an Early harvest oil which means that olives are picked from the trees very early in order to eliminate chances of being overly ripe (which means oxidization which is something that we don’t want), which adds a little punch to the oil. You will get used to it very fast, usually before you finish the contents of a single bottle. Just remember to use less oil in the beginning if you find the “kick” to be too much. Soon you will be finding supermarket bought oils to be light and lacking versus the good stuff. If however, you feel like it’s too much for you in the beginning, then choose our Family Estate EVOO instead in order to ease yourself into the more complex flavor profile of our Early Harvest Organic down the road. But hear us out, try the Early Harvest as well at some point. Grow up.
4I’m a bit confused. So, what exactly is oil, olive oil, extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) etc?

OK, so there are different types of oils from different types of fruits/vegetables. Think avocado oil, sunflower oil, corn oil etc. Olive oil is made from the pressing of the olive fruit but it is broken down further into additional categories based on quality and type of extraction. To make a long story short, Extra Virgin Olive Oil is olive oil that contains acidity below 0.8% which to put it plainly is extremely healthy when consumed. Furthermore, the oil needs to be extracted via pressure methods only, so no chemicals or any other questionable methods involved here.

Cretan Labyrinth extra virgin oils go above and beyond these minimums. The acidity of our oils is always below 0.5% at the time of bottling and occasionally as low as 0.2-0.3%. The olives are harvested late in the night or early in the morning in order to avoid exposure to the sunlight once they are taken off the tree branches and the risk of oxidization is the highest. They are then pressed and stored in INOX metallic tanks where the oxygen is removed before they are being sealed so that the oil remains as fresh as it was when it was first pressed until it is time to be bottled.

5Which of the two oils is your favorite?
Well, that depends. If I want the oil to be the star of the show (think salads, grilled vegetables, or any finishing touches), then I usually reach for the Organic Early Harvest. If I am using it to lightly sauté or as a base for sauces, or if I want it to play second fiddle to the main ingredient, then I opt for the Family Estate. That being said, there are a lot of different opinions. My father overwhelmingly prefers the Organic one, as he finds everything else too light for his palate. At the end of the day, I do believe it comes down to personal taste. They are both excellent oils, with similar personalities and extracted using the same methods of production. Why don’t you buy both and decide for yourself?
6I have a question that you haven’t addressed here. What should I do?
Drop us a line here and we’ll try and get back to you as soon as we can (probably in under 48 hours). If we like your question too much, we might even add it to the list.

Payments, Shipping, Delivery, Returns/Refunds

1Payment is fulfilled by Stripe.
For more information, please read its Services Agreement (United States) at https://stripe.com/us/ssa and Privacy Policy at https://stripe.com/gb/privacy.
2What is your return/refund policy?
Since this is a food item, we are unable to accept returns for any opened products due to sanitary reasons. For items damaged in transit please reach out to us at support@cretan-labyrinth.com and we’ll replace or refund the product if applicable. If for any reason you are not satisfied with your purchase (or in the unlikely event that the item was defective in some shape or form), please reach out to us and we’ll try and make it right.
3What is the expiration date on EVOO?
There is not really an expiration date but rather a best before date which is set at 2 years from the time of bottling. We however recommend that our oil is consumed within 3 months from opening. It will not go bad past those 3 months; it will just not taste as fresh as it did when you first opened it. In our household we usually go through 1 bottle every week to 10 days.
4Shipping, handling etc.?
We ship to the continental US, from a couple of different locations in the US depending on availability. Orders take 1-2 business days to ship and an additional 3-7 to be delivered. We ship mostly with UPS and FeDex with the occasional USPS service thrown in for good measure. Shipping is free for orders above $63 and costs just $5 for orders under that amount. Bottles are bubble-wrapped and shipped in corrugated cardboard boxes usually with additional cushioning material inside.
5The size of the bottle is too small for my consumption needs. Do you sell any larger containers?

Actually, we do, but usually* not for retail. We find that the average household takes too long to consume the oil once it is opened (which starts the oxidization process, which is something we don’t want) and as such we would rather not risk selling you oil that will degrade over time if you take too long to consume it. If however, you are interested in wholesale packaging for your business needs (or a very large-sized household), please drop us a line and we can work something out. (Wholesale sizes are 101 fl. oz).

*We do put wholesale packaging up for sale occasionally. This might happen around major holidays when consumption tends to pick up, or when we have had a better production yield than expected. This usually happens once or twice a year until stocks run out and it is more common for the Family Estate than the Early Harvest variant. This also might happen if we run out of inventory on our bottled production (it takes time to reorder those bottles), just so we can keep the oil flowing to you!

Beyond the basics

1What is the most important factor in making quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil?

This one is actually very easy to answer; Honesty. An honest producer will be able to make the best of the olive trees that he is working with. A dishonest one can produce a subpar olive oil from even the best batch of olives. Personal preferences aside (I stand by my belief that the Koroneiki variety will produce exceptional olive oil, given the proper treatment), I have tasted EVOO that was of fantastic quality from all major olive oil producing nations. I have had good experience with Spanish producers, as well as Italian ones in addition to Greeks. These 3 nations have been on the forefront of olive oil production for millennia, so it goes without saying that there is a lot of knowledge in how to extract quality olive oil even from less than stellar olive varieties. Personally, I have yet to taste top quality olive oil from the North African region and I suspect that the extremely harsh climate might have something to do with it in addition to a “looser” approach to the usage of pesticides and herbicides. I consider olive oil from the New World to be subpar. There is simply not enough tradition and know-how to properly treat the olive fruit, not to mention the subpar quality of the mission olive and the other varieties used in the Western US. In my professional opinion, California “EVOO” would be treated as regular olive oil (the “Lampante” variety) in Europe due to its subpar flavor profile and taste defects that are present in every California producer’s oil I have tasted. Marketing-wise, these oils look good, but at the end of the day, a Buick is not a Ferrari, even though it might have more cupholders and a softer suspension.

TLDR; The most important factor, even more than the quality of the olives themselves, is the integrity and skill of the producer.

2Is quality EVOO supposed to be expensive?

Well, not necessarily, but quality EVOO cannot be cheap really. Let me give you a recent real-life scenario. There are only a handful of regions that produce EVOO in reasonable quantities. Of these, Spain’s share is about 50%. Anytime you have a single player who produces a disproportionately large amount of a product then the price of this product on a global scale (regardless of the production of the other regions) is dictated by the production yield of the main producer. During the 2022-2023 harvest, Spain produced less than 50% of its usual yield which sent global EVOO prices to levels never seen before. For the past couple of years, the average price that a producer in Spain commanded for 1 liter of EVOO was 9 EUR. A 17fl oz bottle contains half a liter, and adding bottling and packaging costs (parts and labor) meant that the final product had a starting price of 8 EUR (9 US Dollars), before even leaving the bottling facility. You then need to add transportation expenses to the port as well as local custom fees. After that you need to add another 1 USD for ocean and inland transportation and probably around another 1 dollar for US tariffs and duties. By the time this bottle reached a warehouse on the US East coast, the cost was close to 15 dollars per bottle! If you then add 2 rounds of markups for the wholesaler and the retailer (think Wholefoods), then this BASIC (we are talking about a good, honest EVOO here, not something Organic, monovarietal, Early harvest etc.) bottle of quality EVOO should end up costing close to 30 bucks at the shelf. If this oil is of exceptional quality (much lower acidity than the bare minimum, high polyphenol count, etc.) then it should really be closer to 40 bucks a bottle. I hate to break it to you, but this is just the reality. So basically, if you want to get an estimate of what the low-end price should be for good EVOO, try and find the global producing prices (alternatively, use Spain’s prices as a proxy) and multiply by a factor of-4 in order to get to the appropriate shelf price for a good EVOO. If you are seeing products that are selling below that threshold then I am sorry to tell you, but it is highly likely that this oil is laced with pesticides and chemicals. In doing so, the yield of the olive tree is actually much higher, which in turn enables these producers to charge a lower price. A lower price for an inferior and possibly unhealthy product. Which takes us back to my previous point about Honesty. Extra virgin Olive Oil is not simply a delicious addition to your cooking style, it is also a Superfood, packed with antioxidants and polyphenols which have been proven to contribute to better cardiovascular health, weight management … and as part of a balanced diet. Yes, it can be expensive at times, but can you really put a price to your health?

TLDR; It’s not cheap, because it’s not cheap.