Judging Underway at World's Largest Olive Oil Competition

Having arrived safely from 10 coun­tries, the judges for the New York International Olive Oil Competition (NYIOOC) — the world’s largest and most pres­ti­gious olive oil qual­ity con­test — began their work this morn­ing to ana­lyze 827 entries and iden­tify this year’s best extra vir­gin olive oils.

It is the most exten­sive tast­ing ever under­taken in one place and orga­niz­ers said they had to turn away nearly 100 more entry appli­ca­tions after reg­is­tra­tion for the NYIOOC closed in early March.

Participation is way up for every region across the board, notably from Italy which sent nearly 200 brands to com­pete for the cov­eted Silver, Gold and Best in Class awards — a strong sign of resur­gence after that coun­try’s dis­as­trous har­vest the year before.

But entries were also up from Greece, Spain, the United States, Australia Chile, Turkey and every region liq­uid gold is pro­duced. ​“Producers have made it clear to us that they view this com­pe­ti­tion as an impor­tant annual event, and we are tak­ing that role very seri­ously,” said Curtis Cord, NYIOOC pres­i­dent, who recently announced the beta launch of a mer­chant plat­form where sell­ers of this year’s win­ners can expand their reach to the grow­ing ranks of buy­ers who seek the best olive oils.

Judging will con­clude Thursday, before a 5:30 press con­fer­ence where the world’s best extra vir­gin olive oils for 2016 will be unveiled before 200 pro­duc­ers, jour­nal­ists and food indus­try pro­fes­sion­als, and broad­cast live around the world at bestoliveoils.org — the offi­cial results web­site of the NYIOOC.

Details of the win­ning oils will also be pre­sented in a Guide to the Year’s Best Extra Virgin Olive Oils dis­trib­uted to over 20,000 retail­ers, dis­trib­u­tors and food indus­try buy­ers glob­ally, and many will be avail­able through the Best Olive Oils Marketplace set to launch in the com­ing weeks.