Six-Day Program in London to Train New Generation of Olive Oil Experts

Few spots remain in the first London edi­tion of the Olive Oil Sommelier Certification Program, an inter­na­tional course jointly pro­duced by the Olive Oil Times Education Lab and the International Culinary Center.

It is the first time the course, which has trained hun­dreds of indus­try pro­fes­sion­als, chefs and enthu­si­asts in olive oil qual­ity assess­ment since it began in 2016, will ven­ture beyond its annual New York and California ses­sions.

Curtis Cord, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the pro­gram said there will be atten­dees from at least 15 coun­tries at the course, which will be held January 20 – 25 in the Bloomsbury dis­trict in London’s West End.

“This pro­gram is inter­na­tional in every respect,” said Cord. ​“Our expert instruc­tors are from 8 coun­tries, the olive oils we are explor­ing and ana­lyz­ing are from every cor­ner of the world and past par­tic­i­pants have trav­eled to New York and California from 28 coun­tries to take the course. So it was obvi­ous that we needed to branch out and bring this com­pre­hen­sive cur­ricu­lum to London.”

Graduates of the pro­gram have included olive oil pro­duc­ers; importers, dis­trib­u­tors and retail­ers; chefs, restau­ra­teurs and food­ser­vice pro­fes­sion­als; health pro­fes­sion­als, jour­nal­ists and entre­pre­neurs; and those who just want to deeply under­stand one of the world’s health­i­est foods. There are no pre­req­ui­sites to enroll in the course.

Program top­ics span olive oil tast­ing and qual­ity assess­ment, cul­ti­va­tion and his­tory, har­vest­ing and pro­duc­tion, health ben­e­fits, chem­istry, regions and cul­ti­vars, stan­dards and grades, culi­nary appli­ca­tions and con­sumer edu­ca­tion.

More than 100 olive oils curated from the largest col­lec­tion of sam­ples in the world are ana­lyzed in guided tast­ings to expose par­tic­i­pants to an unequaled vari­ety of regions, cul­ti­vars, pro­duc­tion tech­niques and unique sen­sory char­ac­ter­is­tics.

Instructors will include Chilean olive oil expert Carola Dummer Medina; Italian expert Antonio G. Lauro; Greek con­sul­tant Konstantinos Liris; ole­ol­o­gist Nicholas Coleman; Brazilian chef and culi­nary instruc­tor Perola Polillo; physi­cian and author, Simon Poole; award-win­ning pro­duc­ers Karim Fitouri from Tunisia and Lucia Gamez, Sebastian Romero and Juan Ignacio from Spain; and pro­gram direc­tor and Olive Oil Times pub­lisher, Curtis Cord.

Those who suc­cess­fully com­plete the course receive a joint Olive Oil Sommelier cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the International Culinary Center and the Olive Oil Times Education Lab and join a grow­ing com­mu­nity of olive oil sen­sory ana­lysts and edu­ca­tors.

Past par­tic­i­pants of the pro­gram have said it was an edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence that empow­ered them to take on a range of far-reach­ing ini­tia­tives.

“The qual­ity and range of instruc­tion were at a level that far sur­passed my expec­ta­tions,” said Jacqueline Tyburski, who suc­cess­fully com­pleted the course in New York. ​“The pro­gram was very bal­anced and in depth, with a real empha­sis on train­ing a new com­mu­nity of empow­ered, knowl­edge­able, and pas­sion­ate olive oil experts,”

“I will apply what I have learned by going back to our pro­duc­tion pipeline from cul­ti­va­tion all the way to bot­tling,” said an olive oil pro­ducer from Sparta, Greece, Demosthenis Chronis. ​“We can fine-tune some things so we get a bet­ter qual­ity olive oil and, hope­fully, an award-win­ning extra vir­gin olive oil.”

“Fabulous course with incred­i­ble amounts of infor­ma­tion that will be used as a ref­er­ence guide for years to come,” a pro­ducer from Turkey said of the New York pro­gram.

“I highly rec­om­mend it. Every day was absolutely worth it,” a gro­cery exec­u­tive, Elise LaGamba said.

“The qual­ity and range of instruc­tion were at a level that far sur­passed my expec­ta­tions,” said Willem Voorvaart, an investor from the Netherlands.

For more infor­ma­tion or to enroll in the London course, visit the Olive Oil Times Education Lab web­site.