Olive oil grades: extra virgin vs virgin vs lampante

Every tanker of bulk olive oil that changes hands in Spain is priced against one of three commercial grades: extra virgin, virgin or lampante. The grade is not a marketing tier — it is a legal classification under EU Regulation 2022/2104, fixed by laboratory analysis and panel tasting, and each grade trades as its own market with its own price. The table below shows all three Spanish benchmarks as they stand right now.

The three grades, in one table

Today's Spanish benchmarks by grade

Live quality spread (EVOO − lampante): 0.538 EUR/kg, computed from the two index values above.

What each grade means commercially

Extra virgin is oil with free acidity of at most 0.8 grams of oleic acid per 100 grams and no sensory defects confirmed by an accredited tasting panel. It is the reference grade: retail brands, exports and quality contracts are overwhelmingly written on EVOO, which is why the OLEA-EVOO-ES index anchors the whole complex.

Virgin tolerates acidity up to 2.0° and slight organoleptic defects. It fills a real niche — blending, food service, price-sensitive retail — and its discount to extra virgin is a clean read on how scarce defect-free oil is.

Lampante (historically lamp oil, hence the name) exceeds those limits and cannot be sold for consumption without refining. Refiners strip its defects and blend the neutral result with virgin oils into "olive oil" tout court. Lampante is the floor of the market: edible grades cannot sustainably trade below lampante plus refining costs.

Reading the EVOO − lampante spread

The spread between the top and the bottom of the quality ladder is one of the most informative numbers in the olive oil market. A wide spread says defect-free oil is scarce relative to total supply — the signature of hot harvests, rushed milling or fly-damaged fruit. A narrow spread says good oil is plentiful, or that premium demand is soft. Traders watch its direction as much as its level: a widening spread during a falling market often means the decline is concentrated in industrial grades while quality holds its value.

Because the Olea Price publishes all three Spanish grades daily from the same methodology, the spread above is always computed from two synchronous, like-for-like index values — not from bulletins published on different days. For how these prices form in the first place, start with how olive oil prices are set; for where they have been over two decades, see the 20-year price history.