Cold-Pressed vs Refined: What the Label Really Means

Walk down any supermarket aisle and the olive oil shelf reads like a foreign language: extra virgin, virgin, refined, pure, light, cold-pressed. The words are not marketing flourishes — most have specific meanings. Knowing them helps you spend wisely.

Extra virgin: the top tier

Extra virgin olive oil is made simply by pressing olives, with no heat treatment and no chemical processing. To qualify, it must meet strict standards for acidity and pass a taste assessment with no defects. It keeps the most flavour and the most of the olive’s natural compounds. This is the oil you want for finishing, dressing and everyday cooking.

What “cold-pressed” adds

“Cold-pressed” means the olives were worked at a low temperature — below 27°C. Heat can squeeze out a little more oil, but it does so at a cost to aroma and to the delicate polyphenols. Cold pressing is slower and yields slightly less, but it protects character. Every Diolivo oil is cold-pressed for exactly this reason.

Refined, “pure” and “light”

When an oil is labelled simply “olive oil” or “pure”, it is usually a blend of refined oil with a little virgin oil added back for flavour. Refining uses heat or solvents to neutralise defects in lower-grade oil. “Light” refers to colour and taste, not calories — all olive oil has roughly the same energy content.

These oils are not harmful; they simply have a milder taste and far less of the personality that makes extra virgin worth seeking out.

Reading acidity

You will sometimes see a free-acidity figure on premium oils. A lower number (extra virgin sits at 0.8% or below) generally points to fresher, more carefully handled fruit. It is one useful clue among several — taste remains the final judge.

The short version

For flavour and quality, choose cold-pressed extra virgin. Keep it cool and dark, use it within a few months of opening, and let its character do the work in your kitchen.