In Britain, Bringing Olive Oil to Dinner Parties is Trending

Brits are renowned for their love of eti­quette, estab­lish­ing rules and cus­toms that shape daily life. A new tra­di­tion has emerged, plac­ing olive oil at the cen­ter of the cus­tom of bring­ing a gift to a din­ner party.

The new gift­ing code gained momen­tum after a report from Waitrose, a British super­mar­ket chain, placed olive oil among the upmar­ket foods that can be brought to din­ner par­ties instead of the cus­tom­ary wine.

The 2024/25 Waitrose Food & Drink report cited a British House and Garden mag­a­zine con­sumer sur­vey. It found that guests are more likely nowa­days to arrive at par­ties with a bot­tle of extra vir­gin olive oil under their arm instead of wine.

Apart from olive oil, the Waitrose report high­lighted table olives, nuts, honey, arti­san vine­gar and rare salt as food prod­ucts that can replace a bot­tle of wine or a box of choco­lates as gifts at din­ner par­ties.

“Gifting a bot­tle of qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil is a bril­liant alter­na­tive to wine and makes for the per­fect present to bring to a din­ner party,” Sarah Vachon, the founder of Citizens of Soil, a British com­pany that sells extra vir­gin olive oil in reusable bot­tles and pouches from small-scale female pro­duc­ers, told Olive Oil Times.

Having worked in the food and drinks indus­try for over a decade, Vachon and her busi­ness part­ner cham­pi­oned the new trend by bring­ing peo­ple a bot­tle of olive oil instead of wine early in their olive oil jour­ney.

“The reac­tion was over­whelm­ingly pos­i­tive, and soon our whole ​‘cheat on wine — bring a bet­ter bot­tle’ cam­paign was formed,” Vachon said.

The para­dox of extra vir­gin olive oil in the U.K. is that record-high prices, which rose by 42 per­cent in the coun­try over a year to reach around £7.40 (€8.88) per liter, have put extra vir­gin olive oil in the cat­e­gory of lux­ury foods and have con­tributed to the high­est-qual­ity olive oil grade becom­ing par­tic­u­larly sought after and pop­u­lar as a din­ner gift.

“And now that the prod­uct is so expen­sive, con­sumers are demand­ing more from it,” House and Garden wrote. ​“Much like wine, peo­ple want to know what ingre­di­ents have gone into it, where the olives were grown and who’s behind the brand.”

Vachon attrib­uted the grow­ing pop­u­lar­ity of the new gift-giv­ing eti­quette to the sta­tus and inclu­sive­ness a bot­tle of extra vir­gin olive oil car­ries.

“Status from the stance of show­ing off a more unique, thought­ful present than the cliché bot­tle of wine, and inclu­sive because you’d be hard-pressed to find a diet or lifestyle that can’t enjoy extra vir­gin olive oil,” she said.

Besides the healthy attrib­utes, bring­ing extra vir­gin olive oil to par­ties also has hid­den ben­e­fits; com­pared to a bot­tle of wine, which might be gone by the end of the night, olive oil can last for a few months and be used in sev­eral food prepa­ra­tions.

“With chang­ing diets and lifestyles, alco­hol does­n’t always suit every­one, but olive oil is a uni­ver­sally inclu­sive option,” Vachon said. ​“It is indul­gent yet healthy, lasts longer than a sin­gle evening, and enhances the meal in a sim­i­lar way – all while car­ry­ing its own unique story of prove­nance.”

“Just like wine, a well-crafted olive oil reflects its ter­roir and maker, thereby being a thought­ful and dis­tinc­tive gift that can be enjoyed by every­one, whether driz­zled over any meal for fla­vor, used for its dynamic nutri­tional ben­e­fits or sim­ply dropped in to enhance a mar­tini,” she added.

However, Britain’s most pop­u­lar eti­quette guide, Debrett’s, ques­tioned the new trend of bring­ing olive oil to din­ner par­ties, argu­ing that it could offend hosts.

“Good-qual­ity olive oil is becom­ing desir­able, so I can see why some peo­ple might think it’s a good gift idea, but it does trou­ble me because it might imply that your host does not have a suf­fi­ciently well-resourced kitchen,” Liz Wyse, an edi­tor at the 250-year-old firm, told The Times.

Wyse noted that an excep­tion could be made for a bot­tle of extra vir­gin olive oil brought back to Britain from a Mediterranean pro­ducer.

“I could imag­ine a sit­u­a­tion where maybe you have been on hol­i­day and bought a won­der­ful bot­tle of extra vir­gin olive oil from some Italian farm you have vis­ited,” she said. ​“That would be a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion and an accept­able gift.”

On the other hand, Vachon pos­tu­lated that if the rep­u­ta­tion of din­ner party hosts for upscale food were tainted by the guests’ gifts, wine and olive oil would have a sim­i­lar effect.

“In the U.K., depend­ing on the party, more tra­di­tional tables might still expect or even pre­fer wine,” she said.

“However, I can’t imag­ine some­one being insulted that you selected a thought­ful olive oil to bring them, par­tic­u­larly if you find some­thing that’s a bit more arti­san,” Vachon added. ​“It can’t be any worse than bring­ing a decent bot­tle of wine to someone’s house expect­ing they won’t have the good stuff in that depart­ment either.”

Food his­to­rian Pen Vogler said that 2,000 years ago, Romano-Brits adored olive oil. After the Romans left Britain in the 4^th cen­tury, olive oil remained in use on the island for var­i­ous pur­poses, includ­ing med­ical appli­ca­tions like cur­ing headaches, eat­ing on days of fast­ing when pork fat and but­ter were off-lim­its and used as a ​‘salad oil.’

According to Vogler, some emi­nent authors and writ­ers also boosted the use of olive oil in the U.K. over the cen­turies.

In the 1840s, home-cook author Eliza Acton advised her read­ers to deep-fry fish in olive oil, which led to today’s iconic British dish of fish and chips.

In the 1950s, writer Elizabeth David, who revi­tal­ized home cook­ery in Britain with her books on European cuisines and British dishes, nudged Britons into using more olive oil by say­ing that ​“a sup­ply of good olive oil is essen­tial.”

“By 2004, olive oil out­sold all other cook­ing oils in Britain,” Vogler noted. ​“Every aspir­ing restau­rant kitchen became awash with it too.”

“No mat­ter what the eti­quette experts say, a bot­tle of the pre­cious liq­uid is a lovely present,” she added. ​“It is even more mag­i­cal when it comes from the estate of some­one you know.”

• House and Garden
• The Times
• Press Reader