We keep running across website claims that extra virgin olive oil must be less than a year old to be fresh (often promoted by suppliers of imported oils from the southern hemisphere). Well, we wanted to put our oils to the test and see how they held up against that claim, so we sent last year’s Mistral and a two and half year old Sierra that had been opened for two weeks to the lab for analysis. The results just came back. Both oils still easily passed all the tests for extra virginity, and to boot, retained very high levels of antioxidants:

Mistral milled in December 2013
0.2% fatty acid
537 ppm antioxidants, only a 4% decrease since its initial testing
Sierra milled in December 2012, and open for two weeks
0.25% fatty acid
684 ppm antioxidants, only a 10% decrease since its initial testing

These results are so remarkable they even surprised us. Our oils start out with such high levels of antioxidants, it seems they are just about impervious to oxidation and aging. The antioxidants protect the oil like they protect our bodies.