The Gourmet Brand Rumored To Be Behind Aldi's Olive Oil

Aldi is famous for its low prices on grocery staples, produce, dry goods, and even home goods and kitchenware. But that doesn't mean its quality is cheap — far from it. In fact, one of Aldi's routinely in-stock brands of extra virgin olive oil is raising eyebrows for being eerily similar to the gourmet Sicilian EVOO, Bono. Both Aldi and Bono describe their olive oils as hailing from Sicily and having a "medium" flavor.

Even at first glance, the similarities between Aldi's Premium Sicilian Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Bono Sicilian Val Di Mazara PDO Extra Virgin Olive Oil are impossible to deny. Both products are 16.9 fluid ounces of extra virgin olive oil, sold in seemingly identical blocky bottles with squared-off corners. But the apparent smoking gun? The dark glass bottles (perfect for keeping olive oil safe from light and air) have the exact same decorative emblem stamped into the glass right above the label — a stylized olive inside overlapping circles, which looks a lot like Bono's logo. Observant shoppers have even clocked that the Aldi version literally has "Bono" printed on the side of the glass bottle.

Of course, Aldi itself has neither confirmed nor denied this suspicion outright. With so many shared details — Sicilian origins, flavor notes, and identical bottles — the consensus is it's likely the same (or very similar) oil, with two different labels. And perhaps more importantly, they have very different price tags.

Stores like Aldi, Trader Joe's, and Costco heavily rely on an inventory of private-label items, and often source these products from premium name brands that manufacture products specifically to be labeled and sold as that store's product (called "white-labeling"). In most cases, an air of secrecy shrouds these sourcing decisions, and something of a grocery whodunit has sprung in an attempt to pin the true maker behind the private-label goods. It's a painstaking task but not without success — we now know who makes Costco's blended Scotch whiskey, the company that makes Trader Joe's salad kits, and have a good guess at who's behind Aldi's Parmesan, to name a few. 

And with the Italian brand Bono almost certainly behind the Aldi olive oil, it's a win-win for fans of the discount retailer, who can score high-quality Sicilian oil at Aldi prices. Unlike many cheap olive oils, which are notoriously mislabeled or adulterated with other lower-grade oils, Bono — and therefore the Aldi version — are both stamped with the PDO (protected designation of origin) seal. 

The PDO label ensures that the Italian government has closely monitored and regulated the oil for quality. Aldi shoppers can get that premium quality without breaking the bank, whereas the Bono Sicilian Val Di Mazara bottle tends to go for around $20 (still fairly reasonable for high-quality oil). Fortunately, Aldi shoppers can score the almost identical EVOO for about $12.