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Greetings from Fat Gold!

In this Field Report, we want to share some nice recognition we recently received, and talk a bit about recommendation vs. education.

Here’s the recognition:

Many of you know Wirecutter, the section of the New York Times that tirelessly tests hundreds of products so they can recommend the very best one: dishwashers, robot vacuums, carry-on luggage… the list goes on and on. We’ve been readers and fans for years, and we’ve turned to their recommendations many times.

Earlier this year, Wirecutter published their recommendations for The Best Olive Oil You Can Buy at the Store, and that title makes an important distinction. Just like wine, beer, or chocolate, most of the very best olive oil isn’t available everywhere, or even most places. It’s not particularly helpful to recommend Terrific Tiny Brand X in a national publication, only to have your readers grump that it’s not available where they live, so Wirecutter set out to consider only oils that are very widely distributed in the U.S.

Fat Gold wasn’t considered, because most people can’t buy our product at the store. (Some can! We’re carried in a small number of lovely shops around the country.)

However, our role in this publication was, in a way, much deeper. If you scroll down to the section labeled How we picked and tested, you’ll see that Wirecutter’s primary source for understanding how to evaluate olive oil was none other than Fat Gold’s co-founder Kathryn!

It’s very cool to see her expertise acknowledged in this way.

Now… let’s get critical.

We’d like to suggest that the premise of this piece is flawed. Wirecutter bent over backwards to recommend specific brand names that everyone reading could find in a store… but is that really the right approach for a product like olive oil?

We think their readers would be better served a piece titled How to Identify the Best Olive Oil Available to You.

In a sense, it’s already there, tucked inside this piece; the section titled How to read olive oil labels summarizes a ton of great advice from Kathryn. In particular, we LOVE that they only considered olive oils with a harvest date on the label. It’s such a sharp, easy filter when you’re trying to make sense of a crowded shelf.

Wirecutter has built a great brand around concise, confident judgments—”THIS is the best one”—so we understand why they approached olive oil the same way. But, the truth is, most shoppers have better olive oil options than the brands Wirecutter recommends in this piece. Those options just happen to be different everywhere.

There are regional considerations. On the East Coast, European olive oil is close at hand, and it will often be the best option. But if you’re elsewhere in the U.S., you ought to be buying mostly California olive oil, for reasons of freshness, sustainability, and trust. If you’re on the West Coast, add regional pride!

Again, think of beer: curious and educated beer drinkers turn first to local and regional craft breweries. A guide to The Best Beer You Can Buy at the Store wouldn’t make any sense; the beer that everyone in the country can buy at the store is assuredly NOT the best beer.

When it comes to high-quality food products, flexible education is more useful than brittle recommendation. That’s the motivation behind our Fat Gold Guide to Extra Virgin Olive Oil: we want to help more people become curious, educated buyers and enjoyers of olive oil.

In this piece, Wirecutter did a wonderful job explaining their selection process, with Kathryn’s input highlighted throughout. We think that section, rather than the recommendations, is the real attraction.

Okay, that’s it for this edition!

Our annual subscription program is currently full. Right now, we’re bottling our September shipment, the fourth and final one from the 2022 harvest, and waiting to determine exactly how many additional subscribers we can support. (If you’re a current subscriber, don’t worry—you are all set.)

When we have that number, we’ll open the gates to new subscriptions, and you’ll be the first to know!

Thanks, as always, for following along,

—Robin, Kathryn, and Bryan