Bonnie Lawrence wants you to take her business, Savor the Olive, literally.

“I really do want people to come in and savor the olive,” said Lawrence, who last week celebrated the grand opening of Savor the Olive’s Suffolk tasting room and shop at 5911 Harbour View Blvd.  “Smell it, then taste it. You will be amazed.

“Good olive oil is like good wine … and the diversity to the palate is huge when it comes to oils. What tastes good to one person will taste completely different to someone else.”

Walking into the upscale shop, tucked in an airy, 1,400-square-foot building behind Taste Unlimited, customers will find 27 varieties of cold-pressed, extra-virgin olive oil and 21 imported balsamic vinegars in stainless steel urns. A stack of small cups sits next to each urn so customers can sample a few drops of each oil and balsamic vinegar.

When customers decide what flavor and how much they want, a Savor the Olive employee will fill up and cork each bottle.

Cards posted on each urn describes unique characteristics of the oil: the type of olive, country of origin, crush date and lab-tested nutritional information from each batch of oil. The most important information are the levels of oleic acid, free fatty acid content and count of polyphenols, which indicates the level of antioxidants are in each oil. None of the oils have any preservatives, Lawrence said.

Like wines, oils have distinctive flavors that change based on the climate, soil type and conditions where the olive was raised. Those all factor into each oil’s subtle tastes, resulting in oils that impart the flavors like green tomato leaves, green bananas, onions and herbs.

All of Savor the Olive’s balsamic vinegars — red and white — are aged in barrels for 18 years. There are myriad flavor options: lemon, coconut, espresso, strawberry, dark chocolate and more.

And surprisingly, they can be used in ways that are hard to imagine until you taste it, Lawrence said. Besides traditional uses, such as in salad dressings and meat marinades, she has customers who buy them to put in ice cream, yogurt and oatmeal.

Because the vinegars don’t have any sugar, people who are watching their weight or who suffer from diseases like diabetes frequently use them for flavor, she said.

Lawrence’s love affair with olive oil and balsamic vinegars started during one of her extended trips to Italy. She frequented local markets and filled her bottles with favorite flavors of oils and vinegars. When the former teacher retired, she was looking for something different to do.

“And I thought if I could do this is Italy, I could do it here,” Lawrence said. She opened her first store in Virginia Beach in 2011 and her second in Ghent last year.

She picked Suffolk for her third because of its central location in Hampton Roads and its recent surge of growth, she said.