At the corner of Marine Drive and 16th Street in North Vancouver, Olives on Tap offers you the unique opportunity to taste, smell and experience more than 50 of the finest quality extra-virgin olive oils and balsamic vinegars before you purchase. “This is the only way that customers truly know what they’re buying,” says Andrew Cameron, the passionate local who brought this engaging experience and tasting bar to the North Shore in 2012.
Guaranteeing freshness and authenticity, Olives on Tap brings olive oils in seasonally, with new offerings from around the world every six months. Every one of Olives on Tap’s olive oils undergoes rigorous testing and chemical analysis, as do their balsamic vinegars, which come from farms in Modena, Italy.
Although the extra-virgin olive oil must go through strict testing, it can still be tasted as early as three weeks after harvesting. “Olive oil starts to lose its flavour and health benefits over time, so to guarantee freshness, we only bring in enough to get us through a six-month period and then change over to the next hemisphere,” explains Andrew. “There’s a lot of fraud in both the olive oil and the balsamic industry, so we get our products certified to guarantee their authenticity.”
