New Thing 56, New Thing Every Day: Visit Boone Olive Oil Company

Boone Olive Oil Co. variety pack ($36)

Before Boone Olive Oil Company, I never even knew there was such a thing as an olive oil store. Did you? It was pretty cool.

Here are 10+ things about my visit.

1. An extremely nice young woman was staffing the store. She was really great about  show me everything and explaining everything.
2. Many, many olive oils and kinds of balsamic vinegar are available for tasting.
3. For the tastings, you can either use a little piece of bread or what amounts to a shot glass. I am hard core; I used the shot glasses.  
4. Vinegar is balsamic because of the process of creating it from grape juice.
5. There is dark and light balsamic vinegar; the longer it takes to make a specific kind of vinegar, the darker it gets.
6. The very first thing I tasted was a dark chocolate balsamic vinegar. It was probably my favorite.
7. The jalapeno balsamic vinegar tastes like pickle juice. No heat at all. I do not recommend it.
8. The sherry balsamic vinegar was yucky.
9. The olive oils really taste mostly the same to me, but good.
10. In the end, I bought a sample pack of six olive oils and types of vinegar: blood orange olive oil, Persian lime olive oil, cranberry pear white balsamic vinegar, garlic olive oil, blackberry ginger balsamic vinegar, and Neapolitan herb balsamic vinegar.
11. Dangit. I really wish I had made sure we got some dark chocolate balsamic vinegar.