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Portuguese Olive Oil Brands Triumph in New York

By Daniel Dawson
May. 14, 2025 14:47 UTC
Summary Summary

Portugal’s sec­ond-largest har­vest resulted in 34 awards at the 2025 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, with pro­duc­ers attribut­ing the suc­cess to favor­able weather con­di­tions. Producers from Alentejo, Portugal’s largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region, earned ten awards, with Esporão lead­ing the way with five awards for native olive vari­eties. The awards serve as a bench­mark for clients and con­sumers world­wide, high­light­ing the qual­ity of Portuguese olive oils and pro­mot­ing the pro­file of Alentejo on a global stage.

Farmers and millers in Portugal capped off the country’s sec­ond-largest har­vest with 34 awards at the 2025 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

European Commission data show that Portugal pro­duced 177,000 met­ric tons of olive oil in the 2024/25 crop year, fin­ish­ing at the low end of ini­tial esti­mates. Producers across the coun­try attrib­uted the pro­duc­tion increase to plen­ti­ful win­ter rain and oth­er­wise favor­able weather dur­ing most of 2024.

In Alentejo, Portugal’s largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region by a sig­nif­i­cant mar­gin, five farm­ers and millers com­bined to earn ten World Competition awards.

When a Portuguese extra vir­gin olive oil from the rugged hills of the north­east earns a medal in New York, it tells a global audi­ence that tra­di­tion, authen­tic­ity and excel­lence live here.- Julio Alves, founder, Quinta dos Olmais

The biggest win­ner from the coun­try and region was Esporão, which earned five awards for a series of mono­va­ri­etals, includ­ing the native Cordovil and Cobrançosa.

“This is the val­i­da­tion of our com­mit­ment to pro­duc­ing excep­tional extra vir­gin olive oils while pre­serv­ing native Portuguese olive vari­eties,” said Ana Carrilho, the head of Esporão’s olive oil busi­ness unit.

“It is a recog­ni­tion that moti­vates us to con­tinue push­ing bound­aries in olive oil qual­ity and rein­forces the value of what we do in the Alentejo region, by work­ing with more than 60 local olive farm­ers,” she added.

See Also:The best extra vir­gin olive oils from Portugal

Carrilho said awards from the World Competition serve as an impor­tant bench­mark for clients and con­sumers world­wide after an ​‘off-year’ resulted in a lower-than-antic­i­pated har­vest.

“Weather con­di­tions were unpre­dictable, thus the most impor­tant thing was ensur­ing opti­mal ripeness at the time of olive pick­ing, while main­tain­ing the health of our organic groves,” Carrilho said.

While super-high-den­sity olive groves flour­ish in the region, Alentejo is still home to plenty of tra­di­tional groves, includ­ing those of Monte Vale de Baio, which yielded a Silver Award at the 2025 NYIOOC.

Portuguese producers capped off the country’s second-highest harvest with 34 awards. (Photo: Monte Vale de Baio)

“Alentejo has many small pro­duc­ers of excel­lent extra vir­gin olive oil, and we are happy that we were able to increase the focus on our region a lit­tle,” co-owner Bart Hubertus Janssen said.

“We encour­age other pro­duc­ers to par­tic­i­pate in inter­na­tional tast­ing events and com­pe­ti­tions, which will help put our region more firmly on the map of the world’s olive oil pro­duc­ers,” he added.

Monte Vale de Baio was awarded for its early-har­vest organic Galega mono­va­ri­etal, which boasts notes of green apple, green olive leaf and a slightly spicy fin­ish.

Hubertus Janssen said the 2024/25 har­vest was sig­nif­i­cantly lower than the pre­vi­ous one, with the small pro­ducer har­vest­ing six tons of olives com­pared with 25 tons in 2023/24, but yielded more bit­ter and pun­gent oils.

“The annual alter­na­tion of pro­duc­tion vol­ume is typ­i­cal for tra­di­tional, organ­i­cally man­aged olive groves – the soil needs more than a year to recover from a large har­vest,” he said.

“We don’t irri­gate or fer­til­ize,” Hubertus Janssen added. ​“If nature wants to give us more in a par­tic­u­lar year, we grate­fully accept; if not, we hope next year will be bet­ter. Obviously, we are for­tu­nate that extra vir­gin olive oil is not our only busi­ness.”

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Hubertus Janssen cited work­ing with a third-party miller as one of the most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges to pro­duc­ing award-win­ning qual­ity olive oil, espe­cially since he believes in a very early har­vest to get the best out of the Galega vari­ety.

“In 2024, we har­vested in the first days of October,” he con­firmed. ​“The yield will not be as good, but that is of less con­cern to us. Another major chal­lenge for our con­sul­tant every year is con­tract­ing a team of har­vesters.”

Elsewhere in Alentejo, the pro­duc­ers behind Est. Manuel da Silva Torrado cel­e­brated win­ning a Silver Award for its medium-inten­sity Saloio blend.

“Our best mar­ket is the United States, so in terms of pro­mo­tion and recog­ni­tion is very impor­tant to have this dis­tinc­tion,” said Manuel Norte Santo, the company’s export and com­mer­cial man­ager.

“Our cus­tomers value the pres­ence of a medal from this com­pe­ti­tion on the bot­tle, so it is some­thing that helps us a lot on a com­mer­cial level,” he added.

While the com­pany gen­er­ally had a bet­ter har­vest in 2024/25 than the pre­vi­ous crop year, Norte Santo added that qual­ity was an issue due to the impact of wide­spread dis­ease.

“The main chal­lenge in the 2024/25 har­vest was the increase in the gafa in the field, which increased the acid­ity of the olives and, at some point, degraded 100 per­cent of the fruit,” he said. This was a con­di­tion that increased in a very short time, not allow­ing farm­ers to pre­pare for it.”

Despite the chal­lenges, Norte Santo empha­sized the impor­tance of the awards for pro­mot­ing the pro­file of Alentejo olive oils on the global stage.

“The NYIOOC award helps a lot in the recog­ni­tion of the Alentejo olive oil,” he said. ​“It is very impor­tant to pro­mote Portugal and Alentejo, as one of the best regions to pro­duce olive oil.”

Situated in the sun-scorched Eastern Algarve, south of Alentejo, the pro­duc­ers Viveiros Monterosa won a Silver Award for a medium Picual, the company’s eleventh con­sec­u­tive World Competition acco­lade.

Meanwhile, two pro­duc­ers in Beira, which bor­ders Alentejo to the north, com­bined to earn two awards. In Ribatejo, north of Alentejo and west of Beira, Sociedade Agrícola Ouro Vegetal earned seven awards for its line of mono­va­ri­etals in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Veronica Foods.

“Veronica Foods reports that the award recep­tion has been great among their retail­ers,” chief exec­u­tive Alberto Serralha said. ​“By pro­vid­ing this addi­tional mar­ket­ing mate­r­ial, fresh, high-qual­ity Portuguese extra vir­gin olive oil has been high­lighted through­out North America, demon­strat­ing that through edu­ca­tion, even some of the more uncom­mon Portuguese vari­eties can be broadly accessed and cel­e­brated.”

Despite high tem­per­a­tures dur­ing the early har­vest, Serralha said the com­pany achieved ​“some of our best oils ever,” from a medium crop, sim­i­lar to the pre­vi­ous year.

“Early har­vest is always com­pli­cated in Portugal due to high tem­per­a­tures, and the past sea­son was no excep­tion,” Serralha said. ​“Having instant paste chill­ing abil­ity using high vac­uum malax­a­tion has allowed us to keep up with qual­ity, even dur­ing warm September and early October. Planning has also been a key part in short­en­ing the time between har­vest and pro­cess­ing as much as pos­si­ble.”

Despite its mod­est yields com­pared to the rest of the coun­try, seven pro­duc­ers in north­ern Trás-os-Montes com­bined to win 14 awards at the World Competition, includ­ing peren­nial World Competition win­ners and new­com­ers.

“Since 2016, our Casa de Santo Amaro extra vir­gin olive oils have won awards at the NYIOOC com­pe­ti­tion every year,” co-owner António Pavão said. ​“They are the result of a huge effort by all the Casa de Santo Amaro team, who work daily to make this recog­ni­tion pos­si­ble.”

Casa de Santo Amaro founder António Pavão inspects his groves ahead of another award-winning harvesting. (Photo: Casa de Santo Amaro)

This year, the pro­ducer earned two Gold Awards for an organic Cobrançosa and a del­i­cate blend and a Silver Award for another Cobrançosa.

The haul of three awards capped off a fruit­ful har­vest at Casa de Santo Amaro, which saw pro­duc­tion increase by 50 per­cent com­pared to the pre­vi­ous one.

“In 2024, the weather was good, with sev­eral rainy sea­sons, which had not hap­pened for sev­eral years,” Pavão said. ​“As usual, by bring­ing for­ward the har­vest, which began in October, we avoid the appear­ance of pests and dis­eases in the olives. Only fresh and healthy olives can pro­duce high-qual­ity olive oil.”

The pro­duc­ers behind fel­low ser­ial World Competition win­ner Quinta dos Olmais cel­e­brated an eighth award in nine years for its flag­ship organic Cobrançosa mono­va­ri­etal.

Quinta dos Olmais founder Julio Alves collected his eighth World Competition award. (Photo: Quinta dos Olmais)

“Being awarded for the eighth time at the NYIOOC is not just a recog­ni­tion,” founder Julio Alves said, ​“it’s a reaf­fir­ma­tion of every­thing we believe in and work for.”

“Olmais owes a great deal to that first medal we won years ago,” he added. ​“Without it, the brand might not even exist today. That early recog­ni­tion gave us the courage to believe that a small pro­ducer from Trás-os-Montes could stand shoul­der to shoul­der with the best in the world.”

Indeed, Alves sees win­ning awards at the NYIOOC as one of the best ways to show­case the qual­ity of his fel­low pro­duc­ers from the rel­a­tively unknown Trás-os-Montes.

“When a Portuguese extra vir­gin olive oil from the rugged hills of the north­east earns a medal in New York, it tells a global audi­ence that tra­di­tion, authen­tic­ity and excel­lence live here,” he said. ​“It’s not just about Olmais — it’s about ele­vat­ing our entire region and hon­or­ing the hard­work­ing pro­duc­ers who ded­i­cate their lives to this craft.”

On a per­sonal level, Alves said the NYIOOC awards are par­tic­u­larly mean­ing­ful because they con­firm that he and the rest of the team have timed the har­vest per­fectly. 

Picking the olives at the opti­mum moment of ripeness and get­ting them to the mill within hours to pre­serve their nat­ural aro­mas and com­plex­ity is always one of the main chal­lenges of pro­duc­ing award-win­ning extra vir­gin olive oil.

“But this year, like many oth­ers, we were also affected by the chronic lack of labor in the sec­tor — a prob­lem that’s wors­en­ing and threat­en­ing tra­di­tional agri­cul­ture,” he added. ​“Yet despite these dif­fi­cul­ties, we remained true to our meth­ods and spirit, and that ded­i­ca­tion paid off.”

Along with multi-year vic­tors, Trás-os-Montes saw a first-time win­ner at the world’s largest olive oil qual­ity com­pe­ti­tion: Wildly Virgin.

Nader (right) inspects olive groves with a producer (Photo: Wildly Virgin)

Chief exec­u­tive Nader Aknoukh said he was ​“thrilled” to win a Gold Award for the com­pa­ny’s organic medium-inten­sity Joaquim’s Reserve Cobrançosa mono­va­ri­etal.

“Part of our mis­sion at Wildly Virgin is to bring more atten­tion to the amaz­ing qual­ity of Portuguese extra vir­gin olive oil to United States con­sumers,” he said. ​“The American mar­ket is pri­mar­ily California, Italian and Spanish oils.” 

“A Gold Award from the pre­mier olive oil qual­ity com­pe­ti­tion in the world is a great tes­ta­ment to the qual­ity of Portuguese extra vir­gin olive oil,” Aknoukh added. ​“The retail­ers we work with in the U.S. will cer­tainly have a more favor­able per­cep­tion of Portuguese olive oil with this award.”

Even though the com­pany expe­ri­enced a chal­leng­ing har­vest and lower yield than aver­age, Aknoukh said he was pleased with the qual­ity. Instead of in the groves or mills, he said the most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge was get­ting his prod­uct to the U.S. ahead of antic­i­pated tar­iffs.

See Also:2025 NYIOOC Coverage

While it remains too early to pre­dict how the com­ing 2025/26 crop year will turn out, pro­duc­ers across Portugal said they are opti­mistic given the cur­rent con­di­tions.

“We are opti­mistic,” Aknoukh con­firmed. ​“Portugal is for­tu­nate that water is less of an issue than in other south­ern European areas due to the Alqueva dam.”

Meanwhile, Hubertus Janssen described a spec­tac­u­lar bloom in his olive groves in Alentejo, set­ting the stage for a ​“top year” in the com­ing har­vest.

“We hope the weather nor­mal­izes soon, as the region has received too much rain year to date,” he said.

In Ribatejo, Serralha is opti­mistic that the abun­dant rain­fall and sig­nif­i­cant flow­er­ing will result in a good fruit set, lay­ing the ground­work for a good har­vest in 2025/26.

“The weather fore­cast shows mild tem­per­a­tures for the com­ing weeks, and con­di­tions look ideal for an ade­quate fruit set,” he said. ​“Our reser­voirs are over­flow­ing, so there won’t be a lack of water for irri­ga­tion this year.”

Back in Trás-os-Montes, Pavão and Alves agreed that the out­look remains pos­i­tive.

“It may still be early in May, but the weather has been good, with sev­eral rainy sea­sons, and we are hope­ful that the next har­vest, start­ing in October, will be very good,” Pavão said.

“Everything sug­gests we could be on the path to another promis­ing year,” Alves added. ​“But as always, nature has the final word.” 

“We hope we’ll be spared from late rains or hail­storms that could endan­ger the crop,” he con­cluded. Until then, we’ll keep nur­tur­ing the groves with the same care and devo­tion that brought us here.”

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