La Tourangelle Review: Cooking Oils Worth Buying?

Welcome to our La Tourangelle review! 

A French-born purveyor of all things cooking oil—even as niche as hazelnut and pistachio oils—La Tourangelle has positioned themselves as a clean, minimally processed option for home cooks of all kinds.

Keen to test these claims, we spoke with the founder, sampled the products, and launched our own investigation of the brand (website, customer support, etc.).

In the end, we awarded La Tourangelle an overall rating of A for their high-quality cooking oils. Call us basic, but we were most fond of their Extra-Virgin Olive Oil. 

In this review, we’ll cover everything you need to know about La Tourangelle, including their sourcing methods and certifications, manufacturing, and much more.

La Tourangelle Pros and Cons

Keeping Tradition Alive: The La Tourangelle Origin Story

It’s hard to find a pedigree running deeper than that of La Tourangelle, a family-owned business following a French oil-making tradition that dates back centuries.

And by “following,” we don’t mean imitating, but actually carrying on the legacy themselves, as La Tourangelle began in one of the few oil mills (in Saumur, France) still practicing this time-tested tradition of artisan oil making.

“It was really a niche business,” Founder Matthieu Kohlmeyer explained to us, adding, “Along the (Loire) river, there’s lots of wine growing and walnuts.”

Things were carrying on as normal for La Tourangelle until olive oil began diffusing into the mainstream in the 90s, which presented an opportunity for them to make the jump across the pond and share their offerings with the US.

Attracted to California’s walnut trees as well as its increasingly health-conscious population, La Tourangelle made the move to America in 2002.

“We saw massive consumer demand and a huge gap in quality,” Matthieu said as he described the early days (nobody tell him about American cheese, okay?).

As La Tourangelle grew their reputation over the ensuing decades, they expanded their catalog, gave back to the community, and as we’ll cover below, continued to support cutting-edge developments in their industry. 

This brings us to today, when the better-established brand can be seen flexing their products at events, where they’re sometimes nominated for awards. 

Now for the review: allons-y!

Our La Tourangelle Review

We use the following criteria when reviewing brands (La Tourangelle’s scores included):

• Quality (A-)
• Transparency (A)
• Website Experience (A)
• Customer Service (A)
• Value (A-)
• Brand Value (A)

As you can see, La Tourangelle was consistently among the best brands we’ve reviewed in most areas, earning an overall grade of A.

Areas of strength included overall product quality, including sourcing and everything that goes behind it. Areas for improvement included a packing issue (see below) and some minor points throughout. 

First, a deep dive on quality.

Quality

Unlike most culinary oils that come in tinted glass or plastic, La Tourangelle’s oils come in tin containers for preservation purposes.

The labels are beautifully designed, and contain all the key specs you’d want to see, including the following points:

• Nutrition facts and ingredients
• Certifications (Non-GMO and USDA Organic, to name a few)
• Informational blurb on the company and the product
• Cooking tips: recommended heat and flavor profile

As mentioned, most of our containers arrived with small- or medium-sized dents in them, and upon squeezing the bottles with just a bit of force, we could easily create more.

However, the material isn’t nearly rigid enough for dents to easily become actual holes with jagged edges, and we appreciate the fact that these cans preserve the integrity of the product more effectively.

Speaking of the product, processing and refining are as hands-off as possible. The oils are processed with physical, not chemical treatments, such as expeller pressing. 

La Tourangelle is also investing in a new distillation method that requires no solvent, called molecular distillation. 

This process uses a very strong vacuum and a touch of heat to sap out impurities precisely and with very minimal effect on the quality or purity of the remaining oil—it’s a little bit nuts. 

The products are Non-GMO Project Verified, USDA Organic, and in some cases (like the cooking spray), Regenerative Organic Certified.

As for sourcing, most of the nuts come from California. The avocados come from California, Mexico, Central America, and South America. Other ingredients come from Japan and Thailand. “I’m the globetrotter of specialty oil makers,” as Matthieu put it.

Overall, the commitment to quality over corner-cutting is apparent throughout every facet of the operation, including manufacturing, sourcing, and more.

For these reasons, La Tourangelle earns an A- for quality.

The La Tourangelle Product Catalog

The La Tourangelle product catalog is divided into three categories: cooking oils, flavored oils, and their gourmet pantry selection, which features products like dressings and almond butters.

Cooking Oils

With over fifteen unique products, the La Tourangelle Cooking Oil section is among the more robust we’ve seen, featuring the following product types:

• Olive Oil 
• Canola Oil
• Sunflower Oil
• Coconut Oil
• Avocado Oil
• Grapeseed Oil

Most of these product types are available in multiple variations, and La Tourangelle also has Non-Stick Cooking Spray and Baking Spray.

Flavored Oils

This is where things get interesting—especially for those who haven’t dabbled in specialty oils—as La Tourangelle has some unique varieties of artisan oil you’re not likely to find in most stores—at least not together.

Here are a few examples:

• Roasted Pistachio Oil
• Roasted Walnut Oil
• Roasted Pecan Oil
• Infused White Truffle Oil Spray
• Toasted Pumpkin Seed Oil

And yes, if you’re wondering when or how on earth you could use these oils, La Tourangelle has plenty of recipes to give you a bit of helpful context.

Gourmet Pantry

Finally, this portion of the site flexes a bit of culinary know-how outside the realm of cooking oil, including products like French Roasted Almond butter, Organic Sesame Tamari Vinaigrette, and several other butters, dressings, and cooking sprays.

Transparency

Oftentimes, it feels like we have to clamor for just a sentence or two when it comes to brands reporting where their ingredients come from, but not so in the case of La Tourangelle.

Not only do the product pages on the La Tourangelle website describe where the olives come from (using their organic EVOO as an example), when they’re processed in relation to harvest, and more, but you can even learn about how stressed out the olive trees are.

Why does this matter, you ask? Because environmental stressors encourage antioxidant production in the trees and their olives, delivering protective advantages both on the product’s shelf life and your own. 

In other words, La Tourangelle is definitely a model company when it comes to maintaining ingredient traceability, and all the extra snippets of information they add on product pages shows both a deep passion and knowledge level when it comes to oil making.

You also have easy access on product pages to practical tips relating to the ideal cooking temperature of the oil, the flavor profile, recipe ideas, and more.

As for brand background information, the Our Company page provides an informative overview of the artisan oil mills at the Loire river (back in France), the move to California, more info on sourcing and production methodologies, and a brief blurb on being a family-owned business. 

We’d like to see a bit more specificity on who (besides founder Matthieu) the brand leaders actually are, but overall, the page comprehensively covers the story of the brand.

As for the more logistical aspects, the site design makes it easy to access shipping, return, and other policies, thanks to a link in the footer, and the policies themselves are transparent and clearly worded.

Finally, Matthieu himself was very forthcoming in our interview. As people do on subjects they’re very passionate about, he jumped from rabbit hole to rabbit hole, politely apologizing while we encouraged him as fellow culinary nerds to continue.
All this considered, it’s an A for transparency.

Website Experience

While the design itself is simple and unassuming, photo after photo of the beautiful French countryside (and the products themselves) adds a pleasing aesthetic to La Tourangelle’s website.

As for the online store setup and the shopping experience, it’s very standard: hover over the shop link to see all of the major categories, click through and peruse rows of options with prices and reviews listed. 

Navigating the entire selection was easy, and adding products to cart was equally smooth.

As for the depth and breadth of educational content, we’ve mentioned how the Traditional Artisan Nut Oil Process page, the sustainability page, and the product pages themselves provide an excellent knowledge base when it comes to ingredient traceability, how La Tourangelle makes their oils, and more.

Finally, the site performed just as well on mobile devices as it did on desktop. There were no formatting bugs or content issues.

Overall, the La Tourangelle website is easy to use and informative, earning them an A for website experience.

Customer Service

We cover three major areas when evaluating customer service: the availability of support services, the actual response, and the policy side (shipping/returns, etc.).

The La Tourangelle website offers phone and email support services. They don’t have a chat feature, but if you’re going to have two services, phone and email are the two we want to see. Oh, and the fax number is awesome. A rare gem indeed.

As for our test, the question we sent via email was answered within one business day, which is above average as far as email support goes.

On the policy side, it’s refreshing to see a satisfaction guarantee that’s actually, well, a satisfaction guarantee.

Instead of simply calling it one but requiring you to send everything back completely unused, the La Tourangelle 30-Day Money Back Guarantee simply states you will receive a complete refund or replacement if you aren’t satisfied. 

Shipping is boiler plate: orders are processed and shipped within 1-3 business days after being placed, and you can get free FedEx shipping within the continental US on purchases of $60 or more.

Taking everything into account, La Tourangelle earns an A for customer service.

Value

As reviewers of premium brands, we’re no stranger to premium prices—the question is whether or not the jump in quality is commensurate with the jump in price. 

In the case of La Tourangelle—using their Extra Virgin Olive Oil for price comparison purposes—we believe the premium is mostly justified.

La Tourangelle Extra Virgin Olive Oil costs $17.99 on the website, which, for a 25 oz container, reduces to about $0.71/oz. Here’s a quick comparison across popular retail brands:

Brand/Product	Price
La Tourangelle EVOO	$0.71/oz
Pompeian Cold-Pressed EVOO	$0.36/oz
Primal Kitchen EVOO	$0.80/oz
Bertolli EVOO	$0.33-0.40/oz

After comparing a few dozen other competitors, a rough outline came to view regarding the general price range: about $0.30-1.10/oz. 

Most brick-and-mortar retail options hovered around the $0.35-$0.65/oz range, while the pricier specialty oils were more prevalent in an online-only capacity.

La Tourangelle is more expensive than most store-bought oils, but not egregiously so; their products are also cheaper than many specialty oils out there.

Considering that La Tourangelle oils are expeller pressed right after harvest, minimally refined, and untouched by chemical solvents, we’re sticking to an A- for value. 

If you don’t care as much about the quality of your cooking oil, then you can find cheaper options of at least decent quality on the grocery store shelves. 

But for anyone who values that extra step up in purity and flavor, La Tourangelle is reasonably priced.

Brand Value

Every brand is unique in how they work to elevate the state of their industry, engage in charity and/or environmental conservation efforts, and so on, which is why we keep this category broad.

Speaking of giving back, La Tourangelle is on the more generous side of the spectrum, giving back 2% of profits regularly to support community projects, food banks, and more.

They also offer 5% of their land for projects like their regenerative edible garden, which you can learn more about here.

The emphasis on sustainable agricultural practices and clean processing is apparent in how La Tourangelle does business, including their recent decision to use molecular distillation tech and their partnership with regenerative farming co-ops.

As for industry disruption, La Tourangelle isn’t reinventing the wheel per se, but they are bringing specialty nut oils to a level of visibility that allows customers access to options that are often glossed over in the standard retail setting.

Institutional knowledge runs deep throughout the La Tourangelle team, including plenty of biochemistry know-how (like that of Production, Maintenance and Engineering Manager David Pringle), food science and brewing expertise, and more.

Overall, La Tourangelle appears to be going well beyond lip service and one-month campaigns when it comes to giving back, and their high standards of sustainability and clean manufacturing help to nudge the frontier forward when it comes to culinary oils. 

All this considered, it’s an A for brand experience.

Our Experience with La Tourangelle

Our team sampled several of La Tourangelle’s most popular products, including the following:

• Avocado Oil
• Organic Sunflower Oil
• Smooth and Fruity Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Non-Stick Cooking Spray

In addition to cooking with these oils, we knocked a few of them back in shot glasses (you really should try it) to get as accurate an impression as possible of the flavor.

This is also helpful in determining the quality of the olive oil especially, as a peppery taste in the back of the throat after taking a shot indicates that the oil is rich in antioxidants.

Such was the case with the Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil, though the Smooth and Fruity Extra Virgin Olive Oil was not nearly as peppery, hence the “smooth” claim.

Both of the olive oils were flavorful and full-bodied when consuming directly, yet light enough for cooking without interfering with the food. 

The EVOO “behaved” as you would expect in the cooking context, shimmering at medium-high heat and facilitating the cooking process in the same way all (good) EVOO products do. 

The Avocado Oil was probably our favorite for its very smooth, yet distinct flavor.

The high-oleic sunflower oil was the mildest of them all, so we recommend this product to anyone looking for the least intrusive option when it comes to affecting the flavor profile of any given dish.

Overall, the La Tourangelle collection was consistently flavorful and easy to use, with no issues in functionality, taste, or texture. 

La Tourangelle FAQ

Key Takeaways

La Tourangelle is an artisan culinary oil brand originally from France that offers a variety of canola, olive, walnut, and other premium cooking oils.

Thanks to their certifications (USDA Organic, Regenerative Organic Certified, etc.) and gentle processing methods that steer clear of chemical solvents, La Tourangelle is considered one of the more high-quality options on the market.

Their website provides a solid knowledge base as it pertains to who they are, what they do, and how they do it, and the customer service response is equally accommodating.

You’ll pay a premium for La Tourangelle, but it’s still more affordable than most other high-end cooking oil brands.

Finally, La Tourangelle is committed to sustainability and philanthropy through their ongoing contributions to community gardens, food banks, and more.

We award La Tourangelle an overall rating of A, and recommend them to anyone looking for high-end cooking oils.