Portuguese Olive Oils Find New Path to U.S. Market

Summary

Wildly Virgin, a brand that brings together sev­eral Portuguese olive oil pro­duc­ers under one label, aims to intro­duce high-qual­ity Portuguese olive oils to the U.S. mar­ket, with oils that have won Gold Awards at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition. The com­pany works with tra­di­tional qual­ity grow­ers across Portugal, curat­ing their pro­duc­tion, and focus­ing on organic prac­tices and tra­di­tional har­vest­ing meth­ods to pre­serve the unique fla­vors of each ori­gin.

Some of Portugal’s finest olive oils may be find­ing a new path to the U.S. mar­ket as a hand­ful of pro­duc­ers from across the coun­try come together under a sin­gle brand whose oils have earned three Gold Awards at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

A U.S.-based olive oil som­me­lier with a back­ground in tech­nol­ogy who now spends much of his time in Portugal, Wildly Virgin co-founder Nader Akhnoukh has spent the past decade build­ing a net­work of tra­di­tional qual­ity grow­ers in regions rang­ing from the rolling plains of Alentejo to the steep ter­races of Trás-os-Montes and the milder land­scapes of Ribatejo.

“As you begin explor­ing Portugal, you quickly real­ize how amaz­ing Portuguese olive oil is and how lit­tle most of the world knows about it,” Akhnoukh told Olive Oil Times. ​“That is even truer in the United States. There’s some olive oil from California and there’s Greek and Spanish, Italian, but nobody really talks about Portuguese olive oil. Once you are here, you real­ize very quickly that the secret to the food is just the olive oil.”

According to Akhnoukh, Wildly Virgin does not oper­ate groves or mills. Instead, the com­pany posi­tions itself as a cura­tor, trav­el­ing across Portugal to iden­tify excep­tional pro­duc­ers, often fam­ily-run oper­a­tions rooted in gen­er­a­tions of expe­ri­ence. These grow­ers retain their inde­pen­dence, while part of their pro­duc­tion is selected, bot­tled under the Wildly Virgin label and intro­duced to inter­na­tional con­sumers.

While not lim­ited to cer­ti­fied organic farms, Wildly Virgin works with pro­duc­ers that fol­low organic prac­tices or sim­i­lar approaches. Traditional har­vest­ing meth­ods, includ­ing hand-pick­ing and mechan­i­cal rak­ing, are favored over fully auto­mated sys­tems, espe­cially in regions where ter­rain makes indus­trial meth­ods imprac­ti­cal.

From Akhnoukh’s per­spec­tive, those choices are linked not only to envi­ron­men­tal con­sid­er­a­tions but also to sen­sory results. ​“I find that the super-inten­sive oils don’t have the same depth of fla­vor,” he said.

Building the net­work has required con­stant travel and years of rela­tion­ship-build­ing. ​“It’s really word of mouth. I talk to some­body, and they say this per­son makes a really nice olive oil, and I go meet them, and they intro­duce me to other peo­ple,” Akhnoukh said. ​“At the begin­ning, I would just show up or call some­body and ask if I could come visit their farm.”

“These are all peo­ple that I know. These are peo­ple I have meals with and WhatsApp with all the time. We have good rela­tion­ships,” he added.

Akhnoukh said each oil comes from a sin­gle pro­ducer, a sin­gle farm and a sin­gle har­vest. ​“Each prod­uct is between 600 and 2,300 bot­tles,” he noted. Those vol­umes allow for a level of con­trol that would be dif­fi­cult to main­tain on an indus­trial scale while pre­serv­ing the dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter­is­tics of each ori­gin.

Forte, the first of the win­ning extra vir­gin olive oils, is pro­duced in the sun­baked plains of Alentejo and built around the rare Coreana vari­etal grown in rocky soils that limit yields but con­tribute to its robust, com­plex pro­file.

Farther north, in Trás-os-Montes, the sec­ond Gold Award win­ner, Joaquim’s Reserve, comes from ancient groves of old Cobrançosa trees grow­ing in a harsh moun­tain­ous envi­ron­ment where unpre­dictable yields give rise to struc­tured, ele­gant oils.

Also rooted in north­ern Portugal, Verde is a Gold Award-win­ning PDO blend that reflects a long and cer­ti­fied regional tra­di­tion. The blend can include Cobrançosa, Madural, Cordovil and Verdeal olives under the PDO pro­to­col.

Akhnoukh said Portugal’s olive oil sec­tor is both com­plex and evolv­ing. Large-scale, super-inten­sive groves have expanded, par­tic­u­larly in the south, bring­ing effi­ciency and vol­ume. At the same time, a dense net­work of smaller, tra­di­tional pro­duc­ers con­tin­ues to oper­ate, often in dif­fi­cult ter­rain where mech­a­niza­tion is lim­ited or impos­si­ble.

According to Akhnoukh, the diver­sity of Portuguese ter­roirs plays a cen­tral role in Wildly Virgin’s search for qual­ity. In Alentejo, where sum­mers are hot and dry, olive oils tend to show inten­sity, with pro­nounced fruiti­ness, bit­ter­ness and pun­gency. Moving north, Ribatejo pro­duces oils shaped by milder con­di­tions, while Trás-os-Montes brings alti­tude, colder win­ters and a greater preva­lence of native vari­eties.

“We’re try­ing to tell the story of Portugal through the olive oils. Not just one style, but dif­fer­ent regions, dif­fer­ent vari­etals, dif­fer­ent expres­sions,” Akhnoukh said.

He added that vari­eties such as Cobrançosa and Galega can also serve as tools for con­sumer edu­ca­tion, espe­cially in mar­kets where olive oil is still seen as a mostly uni­form prod­uct. ​“I feel that olive oil is maybe where wine was 30 years ago,” he said. ​“People are only now start­ing to under­stand that there are dif­fer­ent olive vari­etals and the olive oil they pro­duce tastes dif­fer­ent.”

“Most peo­ple do not know that there are so many dif­fer­ent cul­ti­vars and olive oils, at least not in the United States,” he added.

That edu­ca­tional approach is also reflected in the company’s label­ing. Each bot­tle car­ries detailed infor­ma­tion about its con­tents, includ­ing vari­etal com­po­si­tion, har­vest date, ori­gin and, in some cases, tech­ni­cal para­me­ters such as polyphe­nol con­tent and acid­ity.

According to Akhnoukh, the goal is both to inform con­sumers and build trust. ​“We don’t want to hide any­thing. We’re proud of what we have, so we show it,” he said.