Glug x Ruben's Reubens: Smoked Chilli Oil

Both come from 100% Picual olives grown in Jaén, Spain. The difference? It's all about timing.

EVOO for Drizzling

We harvest these olives early — October through November — when they're bright green and rock-hard. They yield less juice, but what you get is the good stuff: maximum flavour, maximum polyphenols. Think grassy, punchy, vibrant, alive. This is olive oil at its absolute peak.

EVOO for Cooking

These olives are harvested later, when they've ripened to a soft, dark purple. More juice means more oil (fun fact: olive oil is literally olive juice), which makes it more affordable. The flavour is rounder, smoother, more mellow — still rich in polyphenols and quality, just without that intensely grassy kick. It's perfect for cooking, where the delicate nuances of early harvest would get lost in the heat anyway.

Jaén, Spain — the olive oil capital of the world.

This region in Andalusia has the climate, the soil, and the centuries of expertise required to make some of the finest oil on the planet.

Our EVOO for Drizzling comes from a single estate: one family-owned farm that's been growing Picual olives for generations. Single estate means total control — same soil, same trees, same hands. That's how you get consistency, quality, and a flavour profile that's unmistakably theirs.

Our EVOO for Cooking comes from that same farm plus a few of the surrounding farms — all within a tight-knit cooperative.

Why is this good? Because small family farms can't always produce enough volume to make their oil affordable or accessible. By working together, they pool their harvests while maintaining the same standards and traceability.

Picual is the king of Spanish olives — and it's what we use exclusively.

It's high in polyphenols (the antioxidants that make olive oil healthy), and it has a bold, robust flavour: slightly bitter, peppery, with that beautiful grassy kick. It's also incredibly stable, which means it has a high smoke point and doesn't oxidise quickly.

Let's be blunt: most cheap supermarket olive oil isn't what it says on the label.

It's often a blend of oils from multiple countries (Spain, Greece, Tunisia, Italy — all mixed together), sometimes cut with lower-grade oils, sometimes oxidized or past its prime. The label says "extra virgin," but there's little regulation and even less transparency.

Ours? 100% Picual olives from Jaén, Spain. Single estate or a handful of local farms. Harvest date on the bottle. Fresh-pressed, never blended, never bulked out.

You're tasting the real thing. And once you do, you'll know the difference immediately.

One thing to mention up front: it makes zero difference to the taste.

Olive oil's real enemies are light, heat, and oxygen — not plastic. Our opaque, food-grade squeeze bottles block UV light just as well as dark glass. But here's where they're actually better: they give you control. No glugging, no mess, just the exact amount you want, exactly where you want it. That's a chef experience.

We also want you to use your olive oil. Every day. On everything. Not save it in some fancy bottle on the shelf for "special occasions." Great olive oil should be a daily habit, not a luxury you're afraid to open.

And here's the kicker: we want you to pay for what's inside the bottle, not the bottle itself. Expensive glass packaging is part of why premium oils cost so much. In blind taste tests, our oil beats them. So why pay extra for the bottle?

It's a fair concern, and here's the honest answer: when it comes to carbon footprint, glass vs. plastic is pretty much a toss-up.

Glass is heavier, so it takes more fuel to transport. It also requires intense heat to produce and recycle. Plastic is lighter and uses less energy overall — but yes, it's plastic, and we know that comes with baggage.

Our bottles are 100% recyclable, and we're in the process of moving to 100% recycled materials for all our packaging. But here's what we really want you to do: refill them.

We offer refill tins and bags specifically so you don't have to bin the bottle after one use. Keep it. Refill it. Use it again and again. That's by far the most sustainable option — and it's cheaper for you too.

One good squeeze bottle, refilled multiple times, beats buying new packaging over and over. That's the goal.

We print the harvest date right on every bottle — because it matters.

Olive oil is fresh-pressed olive juice. It's at its best within 12–18 months of harvest, when those polyphenols and vibrant flavours are still alive and kicking. After that, it's still fine, but you're losing the magic.

Most oils don't even tell you when they were harvested. Ours does. That's transparency.

No, but here's what it is: fully traceable.

Our EVOO for Drizzling comes from a single estate. Our EVOO for Cooking comes from that estate plus a few surrounding farms — all in Jaén, all known to us.

Compare that to most olive oils, even expensive ones, which are a cocktail of oils from multiple countries blended together in a factory. You have no idea where those olives actually came from.

Keep it in a cool, dark place — a cupboard is perfect. Avoid heat (so not next to the stove) and direct sunlight.

Once opened, use it within 6 months for peak freshness and flavour. It won't go "bad" after that, but those bright, punchy notes will start to mellow.

The good news? If you're using it every day like you should be, you'll finish the bottle long before then.

Yes to both.

You can cook with the Drizzling oil — it has a high smoke point and it's perfectly stable. But it feels like a waste to cook away those powerful, grassy notes that make it special.

And you can drizzle with the Cooking oil — it's still delicious, just smoother and less intense.

But if you want to get the most out of each bottle, use the Drizzling oil raw (on salads, soups, finished dishes) and the Cooking oil for heat (roasting, sautéing, frying). That's how we use them.