Gold Award Marks a Standout NYIOOC Debut for Jaén Picual

Summary

Pago de Espejo, a fam­ily olive oil pro­ducer from Andalusia, won a Gold Award at the 2026 NYIOOC World, mark­ing a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for the brand and shap­ing their export strat­egy. The com­pany focuses on early har­vest­ing and con­sis­tency in qual­ity across mar­kets, empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of bal­ance and energy in their olive oil.

A solid red bot­tle, defined by white type and black mer­lons, tri­umphed at the 2026 NYIOOC World. The Gold Award won by Pago de Espejo caps a fam­ily tra­di­tion dat­ing to 1920 and a qual­ity-focused olive oil project launched 15 years ago.

“I fol­lowed Olive Oil Times from the begin­ning. At that time, we were not ready,” Rosario Minchón Espejo, co-owner at Pago de Espejo, told Olive Oil Times. ​“Bit by bit we have been build­ing our pres­ence, and this year we decided we could par­tic­i­pate in the NYIOOC.”

Known locally for qual­ity, the farm’s Picual mono­va­ri­etal extra vir­gin olive oil won on its debut. ​“For us, win­ning a Gold Award the first year we par­tic­i­pated was an extra­or­di­nary val­i­da­tion of our work,” Minchón said. ​“There are so many brands from all over the world, so being selected the first time and receiv­ing the Gold Award was a pow­er­ful inter­na­tional con­fir­ma­tion.”

She added that the recog­ni­tion is already shap­ing the company’s export strat­egy. ​“We have already started to develop our sell­ing points in the United States, and to have our qual­ity con­firmed in New York is very impor­tant for our fam­ily and our brand,” Minchón said.

Pago de Espejo’s groves sit among the olive orchards sur­round­ing Jaén, in the heart of Andalusia. ​“Our town is Villanueva de la Reina. It has its own regional denom­i­na­tion and very spe­cial con­di­tions that allow us and oth­ers in this area to pro­duce qual­ity,” Minchón said.

Extra vir­gin olive oil has been pro­duced by Minchón’s fam­ily for four gen­er­a­tions. ​“Fifteen years ago, my sis­ter and I became involved and decided to develop the brand, whose name comes from our mother’s sur­name,” she said.

From the out­set, the goal was to raise qual­ity fur­ther through field prac­tices and a defined sen­sory pro­file. The pro­ducer said it aims for lively green notes with a rounded fin­ish — energy and ten­sion with­out harsh edges — qual­i­ties the NYIOOC pan­elists cited in its eval­u­a­tion.

Minchón said the cor­ner­stone is a truly early har­vest. ​“When we say early har­vest, we truly mean early. It is not just a mar­ket­ing term,” she said. ​“It changes every­thing in the orchard. If you har­vest early, you must adapt every agri­cul­tural prac­tice to that deci­sion, espe­cially prun­ing, so the tree has time to recover and pre­pare prop­erly for the next sea­son.”

She said the goal is con­sis­tency across mar­kets. ​“We aim for bal­ance above every­thing else. We sell the same qual­ity and taste in Japan, Poland, the United States, and Spain. We do not make dif­fer­ent ver­sions,” Minchón said. ​“We have one iden­tity. We want our oil to have energy and char­ac­ter, but never to over­whelm the palate.”

Unpredictable weather con­tin­ues to shape deci­sions in the groves. The extremes reported in Spain affected parts of the region, but Minchón said Pago de Espejo had fin­ished har­vest­ing before con­di­tions wors­ened.

“This sea­son we had two months of con­tin­u­ous rain, which made har­vest­ing impos­si­ble in many areas. We started in October and fin­ished at the end of October,” she said.

In the mill, Minchón empha­sized tem­per­a­ture con­trol as a key qual­ity safe­guard in olive oil milling. ​“Without tight con­trol, you can see bit­ter­ness build­ing up,” she said. ​“If it becomes too intense, most con­sumers will not like it.”

She also cau­tioned against har­vest­ing too early to pur­sue mar­ket­ing head­lines. ​“There is a race in Spain to be the first to release early har­vest olive oils. In my opin­ion, that race can dam­age qual­ity,” Minchón said. ​“You should har­vest early, yes, but not before the fruit is ready to give its best. In October, even 20 days can com­pletely change the bal­ance of an oil.”

At season’s end, the com­pany also made a lim­ited run of very early-har­vest extra vir­gin olive oil — 1,000 bot­tles with a more robust pro­file. ​“I can tell it is stronger and less bal­anced than the oil we pre­sented in New York,” Minchón said. ​“Still, some con­sumers look for it.”

In the groves, Pago de Espejo fol­lows an inte­grated approach to olive farm­ing. ​“Integrated pro­duc­tion is a mid­dle way between con­ven­tional and organic,” Minchón said. ​“As a fourth gen­er­a­tion of olive grow­ers, we believe the tree some­times needs sup­port, but always in a con­trolled and respon­si­ble way.”

She said the method reflects both sus­tain­abil­ity goals and eco­nomic con­straints. ​“I am not com­pletely con­vinced that organic is always the best solu­tion in every year and every har­vest,” Minchón added. ​“In my opin­ion, inte­grated pro­duc­tion is cur­rently one of the best ways to bal­ance sus­tain­abil­ity and eco­nomic real­ity.”

Minchón said vari­abil­ity is a defin­ing fea­ture of the Mediterranean cli­mate. ​“Some years are very rainy and some years are com­pletely dry. That is why the Romans built aque­ducts,” she said, argu­ing that plan­ning should focus on water resilience as much as the broader cli­mate change debate.

“For us, soil ero­sion is even more urgent than the cli­mate debate itself,” Minchón said. ​“Spain has lost sig­nif­i­cant amounts of soil over the decades. Protecting and rebuild­ing our soil must become a pri­or­ity if we want future gen­er­a­tions to con­tinue pro­duc­ing olive oil here.”

She described water avail­abil­ity as the cen­tral chal­lenge for grow­ers and called for invest­ment in infra­struc­ture. ​“If water is the prob­lem, then let us act,” Minchón said, point­ing to options such as dams, dis­tri­b­u­tion projects and desali­na­tion.

Minchón also cited con­sumer aware­ness as a hur­dle for pre­mium pro­duc­ers. ​“It is sur­pris­ing that some­times pre­mium extra vir­gin olive oil is bet­ter appre­ci­ated abroad than here in Spain,” she said.

“We are the largest olive oil pro­duc­ers in the world, yet Spain is still, in many ways, a sun­flower coun­try,” Minchón added. ​“That shows how much edu­ca­tion is still needed.”

Those con­cerns have pushed the farm to orga­nize tast­ings in dif­fer­ent set­tings. ​“You have to edu­cate peo­ple,” Minchón said. ​“The other day we held a tast­ing in Seville. People were sur­prised by how dif­fer­ent our olive oil tasted.”

For Minchón, tast­ings can be a turn­ing point for con­sumers. ​“Once peo­ple try a true pre­mium extra vir­gin olive oil, some­thing shifts,” she said. ​“From that moment on, going back to low qual­ity is not even an option.”