In only five or six months you can be a "qualified" olive oil taster, a product that is considered "liquid gold" for health because its consumption helps reduce up to 30% the risk of cardiovascular complications.

This has been assured of EFE sources by AINIA Technology Center on the occasion of the Week of extra-virgin olive oil that until next July 15 celebrated the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment under the slogan "puts the flavor oil" in order to promote the consumption of this food and spread its values.

According to the sources, the emergence of oil tastings in restaurants and oleotecas are indications of the importance that you are taking this product whose market has experienced in recent years a strong rise.

The olive oil tastings are necessary both to grade the quality of the oil as to describe their sensory characteristics which it requires experienced tasters.

Consumolab, belonging to Ainia center technology center also addresses such tastings and method used is called tasting panel, which consists of a selection of tasters in which we evaluate the olfactory-gustatory sensitivity.

After a period of training, which takes five to six months, the chosen people acquire skill in recognizing and average of the different characteristics of olive oil, which makes them "qualified tasters" of this product. 

As explained of EFE María Loriente, Consumolab technical, in the current selection is training a group of 22 women, with a mean age of 45 years, so they know to distinguish olive oil extra class, virgin or lampant (defective).

According Loriente, training in the case of olive oil is more complex than other products because it is needed to accurately measure each of the attributes of it to detect its quality and learn to recognize their major defects.

For this training period has been elected 22 women to an average of 45 years and who have no other work activity, since in this way have time availability for tasting panel.

According Loriente but usually is recommended to select a minimum of 8 and maximum of 12 tasters, the fact that 22 people "allows more flexibility and speed of results," according to Consumolab technician.

Sources: EFE, laverdad.es.