Croatian Producers Launch ‘Ultra Virgin’ Category for Top Dalmatian Olive Oils

Summary

Croatia’s Dalmatian olive grow­ers have intro­duced a new ​“ultra vir­gin” olive oil cat­e­gory with stricter qual­ity stan­dards, aim­ing to high­light excep­tional oils from the region. The ini­tia­tive, sup­ported by pro­duc­ers and experts, requires oils to meet spe­cific health, chem­i­cal, and sen­sory cri­te­ria, with the first cer­ti­fied oils selected after rig­or­ous analy­sis and awarded at a recent gath­er­ing of Dalmatian olive asso­ci­a­tions.

Croatia​’s Dalmatian olive grow­ers have launched a new ​“ultra vir­gin” cat­e­gory for olive oil, with the first 5,000 liters expected to reach the mar­ket under a stricter set of stan­dards designed to dis­tin­guish excep­tional qual­ity.

According to the initiative’s orga­niz­ers, olive oil pro­duc­tion in Dalmatia accounts for about 85 per­cent of Croatia’s out­put. ​“Most of our oils are of top qual­ity, as con­firmed by numer­ous awards from inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tions,” said Ivica Vlatković, a physi­cian and olive grower from Novigrad in north­ern Dalmatia.

While extra vir­gin olive oil remains the high­est offi­cial com­mer­cial grade, Vlatković and other sup­port­ers of the project argue that exist­ing stan­dards are too broad to clearly iden­tify oils with excep­tional sen­sory, chem­i­cal and health-related char­ac­ter­is­tics. They say a new clas­si­fi­ca­tion is needed to high­light oils of out­stand­ing qual­ity in a vis­i­ble and mea­sur­able way.

The idea was first pre­sented pub­licly last September in Postira, on the island of Brač, dur­ing an inter­na­tional olive oil sym­po­sium orga­nized by Olive Oil Times and the Postira tourism board. Later in the year, pro­duc­ers from all four Dalmatian coun­ties formed the Oleum Primum Dalmaticum club to estab­lish rules for the cat­e­gory, from cul­ti­va­tion and har­vest through cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and sale.

Under the new rules, oils must be made from Dalmatian olive vari­eties, har­vested by hand or with hand-held shak­ers and milled on the same day using cold extrac­tion. Organizers said the goal is to pre­serve fresh­ness and ensure a higher level of qual­ity than that required by the Codex Alimentarius and the International Olive Council.

Zlatko Burić, the club’s sec­re­tary, said one of the key require­ments con­cerns the oil’s health pro­file. While there is no min­i­mum polyphe­nol thresh­old for extra vir­gin olive oil, and the European Commission per­mits a health claim for oils con­tain­ing at least 250 mil­ligrams per kilo­gram, Dalmatian ultra vir­gin oils must con­tain a min­i­mum of 300 mil­ligrams per kilo­gram of polyphe­nols.

The cat­e­gory also imposes stricter lim­its on free fatty acid­ity and per­ox­ide val­ues, both widely used indi­ca­tors in olive oil test­ing. Free fatty acid­ity is capped at 0.4 per­cent, half the max­i­mum allowed for extra vir­gin, while the max­i­mum per­ox­ide value is reduced from 20 to 8 mmol O2 per kilo­gram.

To qual­ify, each oil must also have won at least one Gold or Silver Award at a major inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tion and one award at a national com­pe­ti­tion. Organizers said the first cer­ti­fied oils were selected after chem­i­cal and sen­sory analy­ses car­ried out by the Teaching Institute of Public Health of Split-Dalmatia County, with the results pre­sented at a recent gath­er­ing of Dalmatian olive asso­ci­a­tions and pro­duc­ers.

At the meet­ing, cer­tifi­cates were awarded to 22 olive oils from small farms across the Dalmatian coast, hin­ter­land and islands. Vlatković also announced that his estate in Novigrad would serve as the new edu­ca­tional cen­ter of the Oleum Primum Dalmaticum club.

Supporters of the project said every bot­tle bear­ing the pro­tected Oleum Primum Dalmaticum Ultra Virgin label will include a QR code to improve trace­abil­ity and reas­sure buy­ers about ori­gin and qual­ity. They argue the new cat­e­gory could help con­sumers nav­i­gate a mar­ket they say is crowded with increas­ingly expen­sive oils of uneven qual­ity.

The ini­tia­tive has also received sup­port from Mirella Žanetić of the Institute for Adriatic Crops, who said there is room within the extra vir­gin cat­e­gory for a more pre­cise clas­si­fi­ca­tion. For the pro­duc­ers behind the effort, the first 5,000 liters rep­re­sent more than a com­mer­cial launch. They see it as the begin­ning of a long-term attempt to set a higher bench­mark for olive oil qual­ity in Dalmatia and, even­tu­ally, beyond.