Greek Producers Celebrate Successful Finish to Historically Low Harvest

Summary

Despite a poor har­vest, Greek olive grow­ers and millers won 56 awards at the 2024 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, with Crete and the Peloponnese lead­ing the way. Producers faced chal­lenges due to erratic weather and olive pests, but man­aged to main­tain high qual­ity stan­dards and are opti­mistic for a bet­ter har­vest in the upcom­ing year.

This year’s dis­ap­point­ing har­vest in Greece did not stop the country’s olive grow­ers and millers from craft­ing some of the world’s best extra vir­gin olive oils.

Beating the odds, Greek pro­duc­ers rose to the occa­sion and won 56 awards (26 Gold and 30 Silver Awards) from 108 entries at the 2024 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

Greek olive oil pro­duc­tion fell below 150,000 tons in the 2023/24 crop year, a record low and less than half of last year’s 340,000 tons.

Farmers and millers cited erratic weather, which dis­rupted the estab­lished pat­tern of olive cul­ti­va­tion in the coun­try, and wide­spread olive fruit fly infes­ta­tions as the main rea­sons for the decrease in quan­tity and, in some cases, qual­ity.

“This past year was the most chal­leng­ing we’ve ever faced,” said Cretan pro­ducer Panagiotis Tsiriotakis of Acropolis Organics, which won two Gold Awards for Koroneiki mono­va­ri­etals.

“Unlike my grand­fa­ther’s gen­er­a­tion, when the weather was reli­able and con­sis­tent, we’ve been deal­ing with weather pat­tern shifts like never before,“ he added.

Producers from Crete and the Peloponnese penin­sula, the back­bone of the Greek olive oil indus­try, claimed the lion’s share of acco­lades at this year’s NYIOOC with 32 awards.

AMG Karabelas from the peninsula’s Ilia region came through the adverse weather that dom­i­nated the region this year to cel­e­brate two Gold Awards and a Silver Silver Award at the Word Competition.

Alexis Karabelas said irreg­u­lar weather con­di­tions, includ­ing exces­sive rain in the spring and warm weather at har­vest time, forced the com­pany to change tac­tics and once again achieve its high qual­ity stan­dards.

“We had to carry out fre­quent tests to achieve the desired results,“ he said. ​“Having done it this year, we believe we will also be able to win in the years to come.”

The Peloponnesian pro­ducer earned two Gold Awards for the Laurel & Flame Fresh, a Tsabidoelia mono­va­ri­etal, and its Olympia PGI blend for the third year in a row. The company’s Myths of Olympia was also awarded.

“We are also delighted because the Myths of Ancient Olympia, a Koroneiki extra vir­gin olive oil that we sub­mit­ted to the NYIOOC for the first time, won a Silver Award in the com­pe­ti­tion,” Karabelas said.

On Crete, where some of the island’s pro­duc­ing areas expe­ri­enced a dra­matic drop of 60 to 70 per­cent in olive oil pro­duc­tion, return­ing entrants Skoutari and Cretan Harvest over­came a demand­ing har­vest to win awards at this year’s NYIOOC.

Situated on oppo­site sides of the island – Skoutari on the east­ern side close to Lasithi and Cretan Harvest on the west­ern side near Chania – both pro­duc­ers grap­pled with the island’s dry weather and olive pests dur­ing the har­vest.

“The weather has become unpre­dictable, with high winds and warm weather in April and May that severely impact the olive fruit set­ting process,” Maria Sgourou of Skoutari said. ​“Apart from the man­i­fes­ta­tions of the fruit fly, the 2023/24 crop year was also very dry. Drought is one of our major con­cerns in east­ern Crete.”

However, the Gold Award that Skoutari won for the fourth con­sec­u­tive year has tremen­dously helped ease the bur­den of the chal­leng­ing har­vest.

“Winning the award has filled us with pride in our dynamic course but also with grat­i­tude for our fel­low trav­el­ers,” Sgourou said. ​“Faithful to our com­mit­ment to offer the high­est qual­ity, we con­tinue our effort with even greater per­sis­tence.”

For its part, Cretan Harvest cel­e­brated a Silver Award in the com­pe­ti­tion for a del­i­cate Koroneiki extra vir­gin olive oil, albeit with some chal­lenges from the ardu­ous 2023/24 crop year.

“The sea­son was very demand­ing, with the fruit fly and the gloeospo­rium impact­ing the quan­tity and qual­ity of the Cretan olive oils,” owner Stamatis Madariotakis said. ​“However, the NYIOOC award rec­og­nizes our hard work to main­tain our high stan­dards in olive oil pro­duc­tion.”

Madariotakis added that the 2024/25 har­vest looks promis­ing, with the olive tree flow­ers devel­op­ing well.

Other experts expect an improved olive oil yield in Greece in 2024/25, pro­vided the olive fruit set­ting con­tin­ues unob­structed.

“A strong fruit­ing is clearly vis­i­ble on olive trees across the coun­try, bring­ing the next olive oil har­vest some­where between 200,000 and 220,000 tons,” olive oil taster and qual­ity con­sul­tant Vasilios Frantzolas said.

“However, the olive blos­soms dry­ing up in some areas due to the intense drought, com­bined with the absence of the required chill hours last win­ter, should make us cau­tious,” he added. We should have a bet­ter pic­ture of the next olive oil crop by mid-June.”

On Lesbos, Greece’s third-largest island and another one of the country’s tra­di­tional olive oil-pro­duc­ing regions, pro­duc­tion nose­dived to 3,000 tons this sea­son from more than 10,000 tons in 2022/23.

Despite the island’s gloomy crop, Falcon from Sigri on the island’s west­ern coast tri­umphed with three Gold Awards, repeat­ing last year’s suc­cess at the World Competition.

“It is so impor­tant to be awarded at the pres­ti­gious New York com­pe­ti­tion after such a dif­fi­cult year,” said Nana Kanakaki, the per­son in charge of the company’s olive oil sec­tion. ​“The three Gold Awards at the 2024 NYIOOC are the nat­ural con­tin­u­a­tion of the awards Falcon received last year.”

The com­pany has trans­formed a pre­vi­ously deserted area into a vast grove of 40,000 olive trees of no less than 12 dif­fer­ent olive cul­ti­vars, includ­ing the indige­nous Adramytini and Kolovi vari­eties.

Falcon earned its World Competition awards for three mono­va­ri­etals from Kalamon, Kolovi and Adramytini olives.

Kanakaki said that the mild win­ter and the fruit fly, which made its pres­ence felt quite early on the island, called for uncon­ven­tional approaches to olive oil pro­duc­tion.

“To avoid any seri­ous impact on our olive oils, we started har­vest­ing in late August to craft our early-har­vested, high-polyphe­nol extra vir­gin olive oil,” she said. ​“We are con­stantly striv­ing to pro­mote our olive oil through a dif­fer­ent approach in terms of qual­ity and sus­tain­abil­ity, such as the min­i­mal use of water and the exclu­sion of atmos­pheric oxy­gen from the pro­duc­tion process to achieve the high­est qual­ity.”

“We are so happy that our efforts and hard work are being rec­og­nized over time,” Kanakaki con­cluded.