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Greetings from Fat Gold!

Thanks for your great reception to our fresh batches of California extra virgin olive oil. The new stuff is still available in the online shop, and we’ve just lowered our shipping rates by a dollar, to reflect better rates from USPS.

Before we get into this Field Report, here are a couple items of interest:

• Our fresh new Fat Gold Blue is a finalist in the Good Food Awards! This is, for us, THE meaningful award. The judging standards, not to mention the competitive field, reflect exactly what we value most. (And we’ll know if we’re a winner in about a month…)

• Attention, Bay Area residents: we’ll be doing an olive oil tasting at Vintage Berkeley, the great wine shop, on Friday, March 29. Come out and say hi!

Now—in this newsletter, we’d like to discuss something critically important.

Something highly controversial.

Yes, that’s right…

We are here to settle the question of OLIVE OIL IN COFFEE.

It’s likely you have seen it advertised, new from Starbucks: the Oleato, which blends extra virgin olive oil into a latte or iced espresso. It is “more than a drink,” Starbucks says. “It is a revelation in coffee, one that is luxurious and next-level.” And, after a trial period in Italy, it’s now available across the United States.

We obtained one, just for research purposes. Here’s the latte version, looking very frothy:

Okay, this is weird. But how weird, really?

Start with the general concept of adding fat to coffee: totally customary. Here at Fat Gold HQ, we mainly use half-and-half. You may recall the intense “Bulletproof” coffee fad of the 2010s, in which butter was whipped into the mix. That was also weird, but again, the general concept is entirely reasonable.

Next, consider the benefit of getting an easy “dose” of extra virgin olive oil, early in the morning. That’s definitely a good thing! But it’s not like coffee (or anything else) is required for that. You can, and should, just pour a glug of Fat Gold into a spoon. We will never tire of reminding you: high-quality extra virgin olive oil is absurdly healthy.

Now, let’s call some expert witnesses.

A longtime friend of the company, a New Yorker who shall remain anonymous, puts a drizzle of Fat Gold into his black coffee every morning. He’s done this for years—our friend was way out ahead of Starbucks. He reports that the sparkle of oil on the coffee’s surface is beautiful, irresistible; he claims that the additional nutrition is a great boost to his day.

That’s one vote FOR.

Cain Ramirez, a friend of Fat Gold and longtime coffee industry pro, offers a counterargument that takes into consideration actual taste:

The issue with coffee and olive oil lies in the overlap of flavor. Olive oil falls into two main camps of flavor: “grassy and fruity” and “pungent and peppery.” All four of these flavors exist on the Coffee Taster’s Flavor Wheel, but fruity is the only flavor that is considered favorable when grading coffee. The remaining three—grassy, pungent, and peppery—are all considered defects, and are thus undesirables in the grading process.

If a coffee were to be submitted for grading, any one of these defects could make the difference between a Specialty Grading (85 points out of 100, or higher; usually associated with third-wave coffee), or Premium Coffee Grading (84 points or less; usually associated with mass-producing coffee conglomerates).

That’s one vote AGAINST.

To break the tie, we need to clarify: are we talking about medicine, or food? High-quality extra virgin olive oil is a bit of both, but it tastes so good, there’s no need to ignore the “food” component, ever. So, the question becomes simply: does a drizzle of olive oil make your morning coffee more enjoyable?

In the case of the Starbucks Oleato, the answer is, unfortunately, “no”… but a Starbucks latte isn’t much to start with! That can’t be the end of the story.

Here at Fat Gold HQ, we have a little espresso machine, so Kathryn frothed some Fat Gold Standard into her cappucino.

Here’s the milk, with olive oil, just before steaming:

And here’s the finished cappucino. When we stuck our noses down into the cup, we could see tiny blobs of golden oil suspended in the foam:

We sipped; we considered. Here is our final, tie-breaking vote:

It’s good! Interesting, for sure, and worth sampling at least once. The olive oil adds a sturdy richness to the coffee, and of course a pop of fresh, grassy flavor. Will we make this a daily habit? I’d wager “no”… but maybe we’ll surprise ourselves.

Importantly, this homemade version—any homemade version—is MUCH more interesting than the Starbucks Oleato, which doesn’t really taste like much.

So, try some Fat Gold in your coffee, and let us know what you think.

That’s it for this Field Report; thanks for indulging our little investigation. Fresh oil is available in the online shop. See you next time!

–Robin, Kathryn, and Bryan

P.S. Fat Gold is fueled by Proxy Coffee in San Martin, California, which we highly recommend.