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I have not had a first press that I did not like but I doubt that I have been exposed to lives that bad.

Your premise that first press is for phonies is wrong. The first press of a batch of olives is the best of that batch ... that is, if you like the fresh full olive flavor. Not everyone does. I do as do many others.

But to write off anyone who likes extra virgin as a phony silly.

First press is not everything ~ besides, most of us (outside of San Diego County) live a long way from an olive press of any kind, so we are talking about the bottled stuff.

BTW, we will be shopping for gigantic medjool dates from San Diego county this summer. The way that happens is that we will ask a relative to hit any local store that has a bunch of them and have them buy several pounds and mail them to us.

They will be eaten in a day or two.

This will beat the commercial product to the WarshDC market by a month or more! Even the Arab stores around here can't get the product faster than that.

We've found that you can even get gigantic medjool dates on the roadsides between the coast and the Indian reservations (with casinos) that are pretty good and seem to have been harvested maybe a day or two earlier.

But for olives, no matter how many olives I would import from SD or Greece or Spain, that first press would NEVER be better than a pedestrian quality oil found at the local Safeway.

Regarding "olive oil phonies" that term was meant in the context of folks dealing with packed olive oil ~ so few in this country have the opportunity to stop by a press and actually see what "extra virgin" means it really isn't worth considering that option part of the discussion (for the overwhelming majority of us).

I have several Greek friends who miss the way it was done back in the village when they were children ~ extra virgin olive oil is of a piece with a fresh roasted goat on a spit turned by the youngest child. Also know some Arabs who are familiar with that practice, but rarely did their families get to USE extra virgin products ~ those were always sold for cash. They grew up on the last press stuff just before the hulls and other parts get tossed into the family mulch pile!

Guy down the street who really knows his olive oil likes the black bottle stuff for the same reason I do ~ it gets empty faster so you replace it with fresh oil.