What Does "First Cold Pressed" Actually Mean?

"First cold pressed" is on almost every extra virgin olive oil label — which is exactly the problem. It's become close to meaningless as a differentiator, because nearly all modern extra virgin oil qualifies.

What it technically means

Cold pressed means extraction happened below 27°C, preserving heat-sensitive aroma and polyphenol compounds. First press originally meant oil from the first mechanical pressing of the olives, before a second pressing of the leftover pulp for lower-grade oil.

Why the phrase lost its meaning

Almost all extraction today uses centrifuges, not traditional stone presses — there's no literal "first press" anymore, and virtually all extra virgin oil is made at cold temperatures by definition (EU/IOC rules require it for the extra virgin category). So a label reading "first cold pressed" is, for most modern oils, simply describing baseline extra virgin production, not a premium differentiator.

For the numbers that actually separate a good oil from an average one, see How to Choose a Genuinely Good Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

A parallel case: "cage-free" eggs

"Cold pressed" has followed roughly the same path as "cage-free" on egg cartons — a phrase that once signaled something meaningful, then became close to a regulatory floor once nearly every producer in the category met it, leaving it technically true but practically uninformative. In both cases, the phrase that replaced it as an actual differentiator is more specific: not the broad method, but a measurable outcome. See How to Choose a Genuinely Good Extra Virgin Olive Oil for the outcome-based checks that replaced it here.

What a genuinely old-style stone press still exists for

Traditional stone presses haven't fully disappeared — some heritage mills, often oriented toward agritourism or small artisanal runs, still use them. But at any commercial production scale, including Musai's, centrifugal extraction is standard specifically because it's faster and more temperature-consistent than a stone press, not a step down from it. See How Musai Is Made for the modern process in full.