Producers Across Spain Celebrate NYIOOC Success

Part of our con­tin­u­ing spe­cial cov­er­age of the 2021 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

Olive oil pro­duc­ers from Spain won 75 Gold and 29 Silver awards out of 148 entries, giv­ing the lead­ing olive oil-pro­duc­ing nation a 70 per­cent suc­cess rate at the 2021 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

While this fig­ure is slightly down from last year’s peak of 74 per­cent, Spanish pro­duc­ers have expe­ri­enced a gen­eral upward trend in olive oil qual­ity since 2014, when 50 per­cent of their entries were awarded.

While the vast major­ity of win­ning pro­duc­ers came from Andalusia, pro­duc­ers from Castilla-La Mancha, Catalonia, Extremadura, and Navarre also earned their fair share of Gold And Silver Awards.

Spanish pro­duc­ers had a lot to con­tend with in the past sea­son. Award-win­ning pro­duc­ers had the Covid-19 pan­demic at the fore­front of their minds.

Due to sev­eral lock­downs across the nation, extra vir­gin olive oil sales to the restau­rant, hotel, and cafes (Horeca) sec­tor dropped dras­ti­cally. While con­sumers bought more for their homes, this was not always enough to make up the dif­fer­ence.

The effects of cli­mate change also are being felt across the Iberian Peninsula. In 2020, Spain once again expe­ri­enced a hot and dry autumn fol­lowed by a record-break­ing cold win­ter. This meant the 2020/21 har­vest did not reach the antic­i­pated 1.6 mil­lion tons and is now expected to yield between 1.4 mil­lion and 1.45 mil­lion tons.

Still, this is a sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment from the pre­vi­ous crop year and a pos­i­tive sign of an upward shift. Along with olive oil pro­duc­tion, key met­rics of olive oil qual­ity also appear to be improv­ing in Spain.

Among the big win­ners from Spain was Casas de Hualdo, in Castilla-La Mancha, which earned two Gold and two Silver Awards from the 2021 NYIOOC.

“Given the pro­lif­er­a­tion of com­pe­ti­tions around the world, a cou­ple of years ago, we decided to limit our par­tic­i­pa­tion in most of these com­pe­ti­tions dras­ti­cally,” Cristina Aizpún, the company’s sales direc­tor, told Olive Oil Times. ​“However, the NYIOOC is an essen­tial appoint­ment to attend every year if you want to gain vis­i­bil­ity.”

The global pan­demic meant chal­lenges around com­mer­cial­iza­tion and logis­tics. The pro­duc­ers had to put a great amount of effort into imple­ment­ing strict safety mea­sures while still main­tain­ing qual­ity and ser­vice lev­els.

However, the pan­demic also rep­re­sented new oppor­tu­ni­ties.

“We have rein­forced our pres­ence in the dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment to be able to over­come dis­tances and bring our project closer to all the pub­lic that have not had the oppor­tu­nity to visit our farm phys­i­cally,” Aizpún said. ​“Virtual vis­its or the devel­op­ment of online com­merce have opened a new way of relat­ing to con­sumers from all over the world.”

Another award-win­ning pro­ducer from Castilla-La Mancha was a fam­ily-owned estate and olive oil mill, La Pontezuela. They have par­tic­i­pated in the NYIOOC since 2014, win­ning Gold for seven con­sec­u­tive years and one Silver Award for their Premium 5 Elementos brand.

Martín Puga Castro, from the company’s mar­ket­ing and sales depart­ment, told Olive Oil Times that the NYIOOC award is recog­ni­tion of the excep­tional work car­ried out by their team of pro­fes­sion­als.

Their extra vir­gin olive oil is unique because the pro­duc­ers behind La Pontezuela con­trol the entire process with exhaus­tive over­sight at each stage.

“We also have our own oil mill, located a few meters from the olive grove, so that from the time the olive is on the tree until it is trans­formed into juice, only a few hours pass,” he said. ​“This fac­tor is key to pre­serve all the organolep­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics of our extra vir­gin olive oil, 5 Elementos.”

The pan­demic has com­pli­cated busi­ness trips and meet­ings, atten­dance at fairs and sales in some dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels. Given the social dis­tanc­ing rules, it has also touched their oleo­tourism line of busi­ness.

“We carry out group guided vis­its to our olive mill and the Olivar Interpretation Center, located in Finca La Pontezuela,” Puga Castro said. ​“It is a unique project, with more than 600 square meters ded­i­cated to the knowl­edge of the olive grove and its envi­ron­ment, and that incor­po­rates the most advanced audio­vi­sual means to make the visit an unfor­get­table expe­ri­ence: video map­ping, touch walls, etc.”

Award-win­ning pro­duc­ers in Catalonia also expe­ri­enced sim­i­lar chal­lenges, includ­ing the pan­demic and yield.

Mil & Un Verd took home one Gold for their Arbor Sacris oil, which comes from cer­ti­fied mil­lenary olive trees of the Farga vari­ety. The com­pany also earned a Silver Award for its Arbor Senium, a bal­anced blend of the Farga vari­ety and the Morrut vari­ety, obtained from their cen­te­nary olive trees.

“The qual­ity of our oils is very impor­tant to us, and the NYIOOC endorse­ment it is a recog­ni­tion of a job well done, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing that our project is very young,” Marta Rius Llop, a mem­ber of Mil & Un Verd’s qual­ity depart­ment, told Olive Oil Times. ​“For us, it is impor­tant to appear in these awards along­side other major award-win­ning brands, which for us are a bench­mark.”

While they had a suc­cess­ful out­come at the NYIOOC, Rius added, ​“last year was hard for every­one, and we had to face two very clear dif­fi­cul­ties: the first, Covid-19, which forced us to impro­vise, adapt and improve our­selves, hav­ing to change our busi­ness objec­tives. The sec­ond was the decrease in expected pro­duc­tion com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year, which had been more pro­duc­tive.”

Another win­ner from Catalonia was Torres Import, which received a Gold Award for their Purgatori extra vir­gin olive oil.

“We are very proud to have won the award because we treat the land with the great­est pos­si­ble respect so that it gives us unbeat­able fruit,” Magda Martí Vargas, the company’s area man­ager, told Olive Oil Times. ​“We cul­ti­vate native vari­eties of our area, Lérida, to achieve very spe­cial organolep­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics that are rec­og­niz­able on the nose and in the mouth.”

Like many other pro­duc­ers, she added that the Covid-19 pan­demic had com­pli­cated the logis­tics behind the har­vest.

“Last year was a com­pli­cated year due to the Covid-19 cri­sis,” Martí Vargas said. ​“To har­vest, we had to imple­ment safety pro­to­cols, doing pre­ven­tive tests on peo­ple who worked in the fields and pro­duc­tion. Each of the peo­ple involved in the processes to be car­ried out have had to fol­low very strict rules.”

Farther north­west of Catalonia, pro­duc­ers from Navarre earned mul­ti­ple Gold Awards at the World Competition, tak­ing advan­tage of their unique ter­roir to craft award-win­ning oils.

Bodega Nekeas was among these win­ning pro­duc­ers and took home a Gold Award for its Nekeas Arbequina. Mikel Azpilicueta, from the company’s mar­ket­ing depart­ment, said the NYIOOC had a pro­found impact on the com­pany.

“The first impact is the injec­tion of morale that it gives to the whole team, in terms of mar­ket­ing. Awards in this cat­e­gory help enor­mously to defend and sell the prod­uct,” he said, adding that the team felt proud and the award con­firmed the advan­tages of their priv­i­leged geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion.

“The main fac­tor that dif­fer­en­ti­ates us from other oils is that our olive grove is located fur­thest north on the penin­sula and at the high­est alti­tude,” Azpilicueta said. ​“This con­fers a series of pos­i­tive attrib­utes, such as inten­sity and range of aro­mas, an ener­getic and ele­gant palate at the same time, and a sta­bil­ity of the oil over time that is dif­fi­cult to find in other lat­i­tudes.”