A challenging 2009 is getting close to its end… Brussels is getting covered with a layer of snow… Lights are filling up houses and streets… The members of our Jury, are in their kitchen and wine cellar making the final adjustments on those Christmas and New-Year’s menus…

No mistake: it’s that time of the year again!

The entire iTQi Team takes this opportunity to send all its friends and clients greetings for the holiday season, and its very best wishes for a successful 2010, full of taste and innovation.

What will happen during the holiday season?

With the exception of Christmas Day (25/12/2009) and New-Year’s day (01/01/2010) the Institute will be available to answer your questions and help you submit your products for tasting by our Chefs and Sommeliers.


Like the rest of the year, our telephone lines will be open from 09.00 to 18.00 GMT+1.

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Did you know? The International Taste & Quality Institute (iTQi) is getting social. As from now, you can find us on Linked-In, Facebook and Twitter to make sure you’re up to date on the Institute’s latest activities and events!

In developing great, new products for their customers, companies often fall in what Larry Selden and Ian C. MacMillan (Harvard Business Review) called the “Growth Gap“: failing to identify real trends and customer wants/needs during a Research and Development project. They argue, in summary, that falling in the “Growth Gap” is similar to throwing money at your R&D team while totally ignoring your customers (and, ultimately, your share-holders).


In the competitive area of food production, nothing could be more true. In fact, most people involved in creating great food and beverage products to the market have, at some point in their career, met this challenge. As thousands of different products compete for a share of the consumers’ taste buds and wallet, Innovation, Research and Development and meaningful Novelty take a new importance for any company striving to bring anything to the table. In this context, it becomes crucial that Research & Development efforts are aligned with the latest trends in consumer taste.


The International Taste & Quality Institute was founded with this idea in mind: helping great food and drink producers get expert knowledge from the people that are best qualified and positioned to associate taste trends and characteristics with what consumers like. Combining their customer’s feedback with their knowledge and experience, iTQi’s Chefs and Sommeliers are able to give a supported opinion on any product’s taste. The combination of many of these feedbacks can then be used to improve the participating products in a direction that will certainly meet its market’s needs.


The challenge of the “Growth Gap” has been around as long as businesses themselves have had to adapt to changing market conditions. Today, solutions exist to close this gap by listening to the organisation’s customers or to people that know them well. And it’s the organisation’s that listen best that will, ultimately, perform best.

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Thank you for reading!


Don’t hesitate to leave a comment on this article using the button below! We’re always interested in knowing what you think!


You can also make sure you never miss a single post by registering our blog’s RSS feed in your favourite online RSS reader or email program.


Did you know? The International Taste & Quality Institute (iTQi) is getting social. As from now, you can find us on Linked-In, Facebook and Twitter to make sure you’re up to date on the Institute’s latest activities and events!

The factors affecting the nature, quality and characteristics of olive oil, though diverse and complex are well known by producers. Beyond the fruit itself, its maturity, variety and growing conditions, it is through the manufacturing process (cold/hot pressing, physical/chemical extraction etc…) that each olive oil develops its distinctive nature. The extraction method is also an underlying factor in the determination of the “class” of oil (Virgin, Refined, Olive Oil or Pomace).


The taste of olive oil, however, has always been a more debated issue, with two different approaches confronting each other.


The first of these is defined by its efforts to standardise and systematise the tasting process through a number of predefined aromas, tastes and appearances. These are traditionally presented in the form of “Taste Wheels”, often protected by copyright by their authors, yet readily available on the internet.


Various organisations around the world have thus developed their own “tasting guide” and process to evaluate the gustatory qualities of olive oil. This results in a very large array of often intersecting aromas and tastes which cannot possibly be enumerated in a blog post. Similarly, categories established to regroup the various aromas present significant variation but often include various elements under “Fruity”, “Nutty”, “Floral”, and “Spicy” (among others).


This approach, while offering the benefit of a standardized, homogeneous and normalised set of results is sometimes criticised for its rigidity and the exclusion of individual sensitivity demonstrated by the tasters.


The second approach relies much more on the skills and abilities of the tasters. Throughout their education and (most importantly) their professional experience, taste experts continuously encounter new flavours and aromas which they are able to recognise and name in other products. Relying on this extensive knowledge and experience when tasting olive oil helps to obtain a much broader description that captures unique characteristics which would otherwise go unnoticed.


Finally, regardless of the approach taken, the optimal conditions for tasting olive oil also require a rigorous tasting procedure to capture every aroma and characteristic of the product and, above all, a quite, aroma-neutral environment that favours concentration and allows the taster to associate their sensory experience with their vocabulary and knowledge of quality. These


At the International Taste & Quality Institute, a combination of these two methodologies allows our taste experts to reconcile a systematic approach with their unique ability to identify rare savours and aromas during their sensory analysis. Together with our fitted tasting environment and scrupulous respect of the product, the iTQi methodology ensures that all olive oils submitted for evaluation are analysed in detail and that, at the end of the tasting session, a rich report can provide producers with the knowledge and the vocabulary to improve and market their products in the best possible way.
At the end of the day, producers know that creating a superior tasting olive oil is both a Science and an Art. Why shouldn’t tasting this historical product be both as well?

The International Taste & Quality Institute (iTQi) expands its presence on the internet with its new service: a regularly updated information source about food, taste and quality. Follow us for regular posts about how we carry out our tests, access our chef’s expert knowledge and learn the most surprising facts about taste.

Don’t want to miss a single post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and receive every single one of them in your favorite RSS reader or your email inbox.

We are excited about this new opportunity to explain what we are doing. Stay tuned for the first posts in the next few days!


Tastefully yours




The iTQi Team