Arbequina is the gateway olive oil: gentle, sweet and aromatic, with ripe fruit, green banana and a clean almond finish, and so little bitterness or pepper that newcomers love it instantly. Its small, early-ripening fruit and compact tree made it the variety of choice for super-high-density hedgerow groves, so it is now grown far beyond its Catalan home — across Spain, the Americas, Australia and beyond. The trade-off for that softness is a low polyphenol load and modest stability: Arbequina is at its glorious best young and fades faster than robust varieties.
Gentle and sweet: ripe apple, banana and almond, almost no bitterness.
Early ripener; harvested from late September into November. Buy the freshest crop you can find — and check the harvest date on the bottle.