Hi Tom! Thank you for your honest feedback on our Greek oil. We tried to respond via email but it keeps bouncing, so thought we'd at least share here....
While it is of course disappointing to hear we haven't done a good enough job of communicating our values, we're very happy to hear that you liked the taste of Maria's EVOO from Crete!
When we started out, we saw that there was a lack of transparency around where most of the olive oils commonly available in the UK come from, how they're made, and who makes them. There's also a lot of misinformation about the health benefits of extra virgin olive oil and how to ensure what you're getting is fresh. So we do our very best to showcase the farmers, putting their name on every bottle and pouch, as well as the incredible places where they're made, because where it comes from really does have an impact on flavour.
It's an awful system and we're trying to break that chain, so you get honest, transparent products that taste every bit as good as the producers intend them to.
We want you to know how seriously we take your comments. Genuinely, this kind of feedback really helps us improve and we take all of your points on board. We've tried to email you on the specifics, but we'll put in a blog post as well to make it all a bit more clear point by point.
If you'd like to discuss anything further, please do drop us a line and we'd be happy to chat at oliveus@citizensofsoil.com.
-Sarah & Michael-