Olive oil storage: why tin and glass beat plastic every time

Olive oil and plastic don't belong together!

You asked, and we're telling why we'll never put our olive in a plastic bottle.

It's not just about aesthetics. Though it is also about aesthetics.

The first time Sebastiano brought his family's olive oil back to NYC, it came in a small green tin. There was a small dent. Unlabeled. Completely unpretentious. And it was the best thing I had ever tasted.

That tin wasn't a design decision. It was just how olive oil was shared in Sicily for as long as we can remember. When we started Pegaso, keeping that tin wasn't nostalgia. It was the obvious choice. And the more we looked into it, the more we realized it was the right one for reasons that go well beyond tradition.

Why olive oil and plastic don't belong together

Olive oil is a fat, and fats absorb. That's what makes them so good in cooking: they carry flavor, they bind things together and they take on the character of whatever they touch. In a plastic bottle, that same quality works against you. Plasticizers are the chemicals that make plastic flexible that can leach into the oil over time, especially when exposed to heat or light. You're not just storing your olive oil in plastic. On some level, your olive oil is absorbing it.

Glass and tin don't do that. They're inert. What goes in comes out exactly as it was. This is why they’ve been the first choice of chefs and food producers.

Light is the enemy of good olive oil

Extra virgin olive oil degrades when exposed to light. The polyphenols (the compounds responsible for that peppery finish and most of the health benefits) break down. The flavor flattens. A clear plastic bottle sitting on a bright supermarket shelf is almost designed to accelerate that process. It will eventually look and taste like vegetable oil. 

Our dark glass bottle is designed to block light, and tins block it completely. From the moment the oil is pressed and bottled in Sicily to the moment it reaches your kitchen, we're protecting what's inside.

The tin has a history

In Sicily, the tin is the traditional vessel for olive oil. It's what families have used for generations, to store it, to give it as a gift or to sell it at the market. Long before anyone was talking about BPA or microplastics, Sicilian families had already figured out the right container. They weren't optimizing for anything except keeping the oil good.

When we ship a tin of Pegaso to your door, we're not sending you a product. We're sending you the same thing we’ve been serving at our table and carrying in our suitcases for generations. The same vessel, the same oil and the same tradition. Just with a little more reliable customs clearance.

And yes, it's better for the planet too

Glass is endlessly recyclable without loss of quality. Tin is one of the most recycled materials in the world. Plastic squeeze bottles, even when technically recyclable, rarely are, and they degrade in quality with each cycle. We're a small operation and we think carefully about every choice we make. This one wasn't difficult.

Good olive oil deserves a good home. It took 107 years to perfect this olive oil. We're not putting it in plastic :)

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