What Happens to Olive Oil in a Tanker Ship?

Olive oil is, at heart, fresh fruit juice — and like any juice, it begins declining the moment it is made. Its three great enemies are time, heat, and oxygen. A tanker ship offers all three in generous measure.

Much of the bulk oil that supplies mass-market brands travels this way: pumped into large shipping tanks or flexible bladders, moved through ports, and carried across oceans over weeks. Along the journey it waits — in terminals, in transfer tanks, in blending facilities — before it ever meets a bottle. Every stage adds age; every transfer adds exposure. By the time such oil reaches a supermarket shelf, and then sits on it for months more, its brightest qualities are memories.

Posterino’s oil never sees a bulk tanker. It is pressed at our own frantoio in San Procopio within hours of harvest, then held in stainless steel under nitrogen — shielded from oxygen — until it is bottled on the estate. The only long voyage it makes is in the bottle, sealed and protected, on its way to you. Some oil crosses the sea anonymously; ours arrives with its name on it.