What sense is there in seasoning if you do not fully know that which is added to the foods? If the condiment is not tasted beforehand you risk to ruin a dish, to alter the airy taste, to render a food less pleasant. A mayonnaise is tasted, a sauce is tasted, a juice is tasted. Why isn’t care likewise taken when food must be seasoned with extra virgin olive oil? Many are not in the habit of tasting the oil. It seems there is almost a mental hestitation, the fear of becoming soiled with grease, the fear of having an unpleasant sensation. Only in a few regions, those of long standing oil-making tradition, is appreciated the tasting of the "natural oil" perhaps like an heirloom of a tradition that saw the tasting immediately after the harvest and crushing of the olives. The tasting of the oil normally takes place with the presentation of the "raw" oil on a slice of bread, but a ceremony known to still fewer is that the tasting of an extra virgin oil is often performed blindfolded. There are many others that make comparisons between one oil and another to establish a terminus of comparison and fit choices. The tasting of the oil is always known by too few. Only when a defect is so serious as to render an oil disgusting emerges a kind of "instinct of conservation" that pushes us to refuse a condiment, to feel it bouncing and heavy. Too often many people don’t even know when the olives are harvested and pressed, and when the season of the new oil is opened. Tasting the oil is an art and also an exercise of learning that borders on the pleasure of a game. We must prepare ourselves for the tasting with adequate coaching. We must sharpen the senses and become willing to perform repeated exercises of the memory. The associations of the taste, the memory of olfactory and palative impressions, the recollection of sensations already announced. All converge to a precise arrangement of the impact that an extra virgin oil can have on our senses. The adhesion or the refusal may be predictable, or it may require some moments of reflection in which everything is examined. Only after an attentive analysis of all the perceptive factors could we judge if an extra virgin olive oil answers our needs, if it is the "correct" condiment for that dish, if a thread of it suffices or if we could be more generous. No matter how familiar we become with a condiment we must never ignore the cognitive factors that give us assurance.