Meet Queenie, Bluffdale’s Own Olive Oil Sommelier

How a gift of three cases of Italian olive oil turned Kun "Queenie" Covington from an advertising executive into one of Utah's most knowledgeable guides to real extra virgin olive oil.

For twenty-five years, Kun Covington built brands. She spent her career inside international advertising agencies in Beijing and Shanghai before launching her own consulting firm — a life spent thinking about consumers, communication, and the stories products tell. She did not expect that story, for her, would eventually be told in bottles of oil pressed from olives grown on a family farm in southern Italy.

The turn came quietly, the way the best ones do. Her son was four months old and just starting solid foods when a friend sent the family three cases of high-quality extra virgin olive oil, straight from an Italian producer. They began using it every day. And when those three cases ran out, something had become clear: they couldn't go back.

"I searched everywhere — online and in stores — but I simply couldn't find the same level of freshness, flavor, and quality," she says. So she asked herself a question that would reshape her life: If I can't find it, why not import it myself?

The deeper she went, the more she realized how little she — and most people — actually knew about olive oil. She wanted to understand what truly defines quality, not just as an importer but as someone who could taste it, evaluate it, and explain it. That curiosity carried her to New York, where she trained professionally and earned her certification as an Olive Oil Sommelier (so-muhl-YAY) — yes, it's a real credential. Like the wine experts who can name a vintage from a sip, an olive oil sommelier trains to taste, grade, and spot flaws in oil the way a wine pro reads a glass. Later she traveled to Southern Italy, where she spent time learning firsthand how freshly harvested olives become extraordinary oil.

What began as a search for something better for her own family became LOVEVOO.

What most people never taste

Ask Queenie — the name friends and customers know her by — what a great day looks like, and she won't describe a sales figure. She'll describe a tasting class: the oils set out, the little cups, the flavor charts, and a room of people about to taste real extra virgin olive oil for the first time.

"My favorite moment is watching someone truly taste fresh extra virgin olive oil for the first time," she says. They catch aromas they never expected — fresh-cut grass, tomato leaves, green almonds — and then comes the surprise of a pungent bite at the back of the throat. That's usually when the questions start. Why is it bitter? Why is it pungent? Why do the varieties taste so different?

Those very sensations, she explains, are often mistaken for flaws when they're actually signs of life. Bitterness and a pungent finish point to freshness and naturally occurring polyphenols — the compounds behind much of the oil's reputed health value. Learning to recognize them is the difference between owning good olive oil and actually experiencing it.

She learned how much that matters in one of her own classes, when a student proudly brought in an expensive bottle she'd paid a great deal for. When the group opened and tasted it together, they found the oil had quietly deteriorated — undone not by price but by storage, by light and heat and time. "You can spend a lot of money on a great bottle," Queenie says, "but if you don't know what fresh EVOO should taste like, you may never actually experience the quality you paid for."

That's why education sits at the center of everything she does. Importing great oil, she decided, was never going to be enough on its own.

Trust, in a bottle

As a certified sommelier, Queenie personally tastes and selects every oil LOVEVOO imports, working directly with acclaimed producers in Italy. But the standard she holds herself to is simpler than any certification. "I will only offer my customers something I would proudly bring home to my own family," she says. Every oil she sells is one she and her family use every day.

It shows in how her customers change. She lights up describing one who recently placed her fourth order — not because of the reorder, but because that customer had learned to smell and taste her oil and judge for herself whether it was still fresh. "I'm not trying to build a transaction," Queenie says. "I'm trying to build trust."

Ten years from now, she hopes her name means three things along the Wasatch Front: trust, expertise, and care. Care for where an oil comes from and the people who make it. Care for how it travels and the shape it arrives in. And care for the families who bring it home.

Her invitation to anyone who hasn't yet met her is disarmingly simple. "Stay curious," she says, "and be willing to try something new." Slow down, smell, taste, and learn the story behind something ordinary — and you may find, as she did, an entirely different world waiting inside it.

LOVEVOO (Serendipity Trading LLC) was founded in 2023 and is based in Bluffdale, Utah, serving customers nationwide. Founder Kun "Queenie" Covington is a certified Olive Oil Sommelier. Learn more at lovevoo.com or on Instagram @lovevoo8.