Saratoga Olive Oil Company Review

The Positives of Saratoga Oil

Saratoga offer a decent variety of different cultivars (type of olive used to make the oil). If you are looking for oils that contain the most healthy polyphenols then you should look for varietal oils that are marked 'Robust' by Saratoga. Polyphenols can increase the bitter and peppery notes within an olive oil, so as a general rule the more 'Robust' an oil is, the higher it will generally be in healthy polyphenols.

The quality of their production partners also seem to be generally good. For example their Portuguese Cobrançosa, making use of a high vacuum process during the malaxation stage of oil production. This sort of process improvement can yield higher quality olive oil by reducing free fatty acidity and peroxide values which can lead to an oil with a higher shelf-life. The South African Coratina also has excellent quality metrics, a free fatty acidity of 0.13 and a peroxide value of 2.77, both very impressive.

The Negatives to Saratoga

There are some disappointing sides to Saratoga though. Unfortunately they have chosen to bottle these oils in transparent bottles—these look great and are perfect for showing off the colour of the oil, but bottles like this let too much light in, and this negatively affects the oil. The UV in sunlight is damaging to olive oil, and will turn the it rancid quicker, degrading its healthy polyphenols along the way too.

The other downside to Saratoga is the bottle sizing and price point. They don't seem to offer 500ml bottles for their varietal oils and this is a shame as 500ml is a great size for olive oil. It's convenient as you won't run out right away, but you won't have to store an open bottle of oil for months on end (once a bottle is open and exposed to air it will start degrading). The price point is also a little disappointing once you factor in the shipping cost. Ordering a 200ml and 375ml would come to $42.90 at current pricing, then you'd have to add shipping on top of that.

Our Recommendation

For these reasons, we recommend an oil from ONSURI instead. If you look at ONSURI Arbosana, you get 584 mg/Kg worth of healthy polyphenols—so effectively the same as the Saratoga Cobrançosa. But, the ONSURI oil comes packaged in a tin, so it can be displayed on your kitchen countertops or table and be 100% protected from the damaging sunlight. It's also less than $30 shipped, so it seems a no-brainer.