At 80, Croatian Producer Drago Malić Wins Gold at 2026 NYIOOC

Summary

80-year-old olive grower Drago Malić from Sukošan in Dalmatia won a Gold Award for Croatia at the 2026 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, despite fac­ing dif­fi­cult con­di­tions and lower yields. Malić, a retired teacher, pro­duced the cham­pion oil by har­vest­ing on October 18 and blend­ing native vari­eties to cre­ate a bal­anced oil, cel­e­brat­ing the achieve­ment with his fam­ily and reflect­ing on his life­long pas­sion for olives and col­lect­ing.

Drago Malić, an 80-year-old olive grower from Sukošan in sun­lit Dalmatia, has won a Gold Award for Croatia at the 2026 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

The news reached Malić, where he spends much of his time: in the grove, prun­ing shears in hand. ​“Persistence paid off,” said the retired math­e­mat­ics and physics teacher, who has spent more than four decades work­ing with olives on two sites near Bulić and Buković.

He said the sea­son brought dif­fi­cult con­di­tions and roughly halved yields com­pared with pre­vi­ous years. Still, Malić adjusted quickly, mov­ing the har­vest for­ward to October 18 to stay ahead of the olive fruit fly and pre­serve qual­ity.

“We har­vested the fruit for the cham­pion oil on October 18 and cold-pressed it the same day,” he said.

He also recalled the fig­ures with­out hes­i­ta­tion. From 1,500 kilo­grams of olives, Malić said he pro­duced 560 liters of oil — far less fruit than the pre­vi­ous year, when 4.5 tons yielded about 750 liters.

“I remem­ber num­bers more eas­ily than names,” he said with a smile, adding that he still knows the phone num­bers of fam­ily and friends by heart.

Malić’s award-win­ning olive oil is built around Oblica, the most wide­spread native vari­ety in Dalmatia and a reg­u­lar stand­out in inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tions. He blended it with Krvavica and Grambućela to cre­ate what he described as a bal­anced oil, with gen­tle pun­gency and bit­ter­ness.

A life beyond the grove

Friends say Malić is as much a col­lec­tor as he is a grower. In his cel­lar, he keeps more than 120 dif­fer­ent ham­mers, includ­ing a fam­ily heir­loom known as ​“Čatak,” a forked Ottoman-era tool he believes could be cen­turies old. He is also a pas­sion­ate numis­ma­tist, with coins dat­ing back to Roman times.

The cel­e­bra­tion, how­ever, was firmly rooted in fam­ily. After word of the Gold Award spread, his son Ivan — an elec­tri­cal engi­neer and the author of the ​“Poljoprivredne priče” blog — trav­eled from Zagreb to con­grat­u­late him. ​“It’s won­der­ful to see that spark in the eyes of an 80-year-old,” Ivan wrote.

Malić said con­grat­u­la­tions also came from his wife, Zorka, and daugh­ter, Marija, and that the mes­sages from his five grand­chil­dren meant the most. ​“Everyone in the fam­ily takes part in the har­vest,” he said, not­ing that one grand­son, Antonio, even flies in from Luxembourg to help.

For Malić, the award is a reminder that win­ning can come at any stage of life — when expe­ri­ence, tim­ing and steady work align.