FAQs

Answers to our community's top questions

From farming to cooking to refilling—see how it all works...

About the Olive Oil Club

The subscription Olive Oil Club starts right away with our refill pouches through the letterbox. If you'd like to have one of our signature bottles, you can also order that through our Starter Pack or separately. And shipping is free when you add any other products to your subscription order. Just another perk of joining the Club.
We curate new, exciting EVOOs from small-batch producers that change every *1-2 months*, depending on availability. That means you can expect at least 6 per year.
As the nature of the harvest and the size of our community means changes, the amount of oil we get each year varies.
While you won't receive a different oil every month, you will certainly get to try several different regions, styles, and varieties throughout the year.
Currently, we can't offer a choice of oil in our Olive Oil Club due to the nature of supporting small-batch producers and planning all the oil with them at their annual harvest. However, if you don't like a particular style, do let us know and we’ll certainly try to accommodate with something else that's available. Feedback is very welcome as it helps us source better for the future!
Unfortunately, we're not able to send these outside of the UK at this time, but we hope we can find a solution in the future. In the meantime, you can purchase some of our oils in bottles through Selfridges for international orders.
This link should take you directly to the subscription side of your account. Alternatively, you can access your account by the button in the upper right-hand corner of our website. In case of any issues, please contact oliveus@citizensofsoil.com.
We send through the upcoming oil in our newsletter, so keep an eye on your inboxes at the end of every month to see what’s coming up next! You can also check out this page to see the current oil in rotation and what we'll share next month: www.citizensofsoil.com/pages/our-producers

Questions about the olive oils

Our producers all farm organically to the EU standard without any synthetics or chemical "cides". And some of our producers have been certified organic.
However, as we only work with small-scale farms, some have not yet been certified—which is why we cannot legally label them as “organic” unless it has the certification. Many of them, though, are well on their way in the conversion and audit process (it takes a few years), so we hope to share more soon.
In short, yes. There isno heat or chemicals used to extract our extra virgin olive oils. And we have third-party lab reports open for each oil to showcase that.
However, this term is really just a marketing buzzword (particularly when used by other non-olive oils).
Welcome to the fascinating, yet very confusing world of extra virgin olive oil. We wrote an article all about the term "cold-pressed" if you'd like to read up in detail. By legal definition in the EU, extra virgin olive oil must be extracted without any heat or chemicals and only comes from the “first pressing” (more like crushing) of the olives—which is exactly the definition of how make our EVOOs.
Yes, and please do. In fact, because of its antioxidants, EVOO is the healthiest fat you can cook with. Read our blog for more details and explanation about that misleading "smoke point" conversation.
Almost all of our EVOOs are considered to be high in polyphenols since they are over well the benchmark of 250mg/kg of total polyphenols that's been set by the EU Regulation (No. 432/2012).

However, the highest polyphenol oil we currently have available is the one from Portugal—it comes in at 799 mg/kg of total polyphenols!

About our packaging

We use Zero Waste Box™ by TerraCycle® to recycle our packaging/waste that are not currently recycled by traditional recycling facilities.
At TerraCycle®, your old pouches are turned into plastic granules and transformed into new products. So instead of being landfilled or incinerated, the pouches are transformed into raw materials that can be reused.
👀 There's also an option to drop off at some soft-plastic recycling points around the country, so check those out here.
Due to the nature of extra virgin olive oil, these mulit-layer plastic pouches are the best solution available. We've spoken to olive oil and sustainability experts alike—and this is the best format to keep the oil in its top-quality condition while keeping the carbon impact and packaging waste low.
The pouch is made from PET12/
7ALU/ 15NY/ PE120.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of EVOO, it cannot be stored in compostable or plant-based options on the market at this time.
We are actively looking for an even better alternative. If you know of any food-grade, hardy materials for fresh oils—drop us a line.