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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Lifestyle
Nicholas Jordan

Australian supermarket olives taste test: ‘I want to draw a still-life painting of these’

A man holds up an olive
The art of an olive: reviewers found the best green olive tasted like green tea, artichokes and white cheeses. Photograph: Isabella Moore

Imagine the best and worst olive. Take a second. Maybe close your eyes to immerse yourself in the exercise. What does the best olive look like? How about the worst? What is the texture of the best olive? How does the worst olive taste?

I ask myself questions like this before every taste test, a mental exercise to help calibrate all the scores I’m about to give. But sometimes there are surprises, things so exceptionally good, bad or different they exist beyond the imagination. Things I thought weren’t possible in a supermarket product or maybe at all. This taste test was full of them.

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