South African Producers Celebrate Quality After Season Marred by Blackouts

South African pro­duc­ers over­came his­tor­i­cally bad power cuts and inclement weather to achieve record suc­cess at the 2023 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

Seven pro­duc­ers, pri­mar­ily from the Western Cape, the largest pro­duc­ing region in the coun­try, com­bined to earn a record-high 16 awards, eclips­ing the pre­vi­ous year’s record by six.

More impres­sively, farm­ers and millers earned a 100-per­cent suc­cess rate with 16 extra vir­gin olive oil sam­ples awarded from 16 entries, the only time a coun­try has achieved per­fec­tion with more than seven entries at the com­pe­ti­tion.

South African pro­duc­ers yielded around 1.2 mil­lion liters of extra vir­gin olive oil in the 2022/23 crop year, down from almost 1.7 mil­lion liters in the pre­vi­ous year. However, the qual­ity of their oils com­pen­sated for the drop in pro­duc­tion.

“We are hon­ored that South African extra vir­gin olive oils are com­pet­ing, acknowl­edged and awarded the high­est acco­lades in inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tions,” Wendy Petersen, the chief exec­u­tive of the South African Olive Industry Association (SA Olive), told Olive Oil Times.

Among the big win­ners from the Southern Hemisphere’s fifth-largest pro­ducer was Mardouw Olive Estate. The Western Cape pro­ducer between Ashton and Robertson earned two Gold Awards for its Frantoio and Favolosa mono­va­ri­etals.

“It is a huge honor,” gen­eral man­ager Philip King said. ​“This is Mardouw’s third con­sec­u­tive year that we have been awarded, and every time feels like the first time.”

King hopes that win­ning these awards will help increase tourism and ser­vices for Mardouw Olive Estate, other pro­duc­ers in the region and the rest of South Africa.

King said load-shed­ding, a euphemism in South Africa to describe rolling black­outs, was one of the com­pa­ny’s most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges in pro­duc­ing olive oil this year. ​“But we got backup elec­tric­ity in the form of a gen­er­a­tor,” he said. ​“The work had to go on.”

About 150 kilo­me­ters west of Mardouw Olive Estate, Babylonstoren was another of the coun­try’s multi-award win­ners, earn­ing three Gold Awards for its Coratina and Frantoio mono­va­ri­etals along with a blend.

“We are absolutely thrilled and hon­ored to have received this recog­ni­tion,” said Petrus van Eeden, Babylonstoren’s olive spe­cial­ist.

He added that the awards prove the company’s extra vir­gin olive oil is as good or bet­ter than its com­peti­tors, espe­cially as the brand estab­lishes a foot­print in the United States.

“Since our olive oil already has a pres­ence in the U.S., which we aim to expand, enter­ing the com­pe­ti­tion was a nat­ural choice,” van Eeden said.

He attrib­uted the company’s suc­cess in its first time enter­ing the com­pe­ti­tion to loamy soil and sunny Mediterranean cli­mate on the slopes of Simonsberg in the Franschhoek wine val­ley, where the com­pany grows 14 cul­ti­vars.

Van Eeden said the Babylonstoren’s pro­duc­tion team over­came sub­stan­tial amounts of rain dur­ing the har­vest, which pre­sented var­i­ous chal­lenges.

“It made the har­vest­ing process more com­plex and slowed down our oper­a­tions,” he said. ​“The rain delayed the ripen­ing of the olives, result­ing in a longer har­vest­ing sea­son than antic­i­pated.”

Still, Van Eeden added they man­aged to har­vest olives of excep­tional qual­ity despite these hur­dles.

Further north, Porterville Olives con­tin­ued its long-run­ning suc­cess streak at the World Competiton, win­ning two Gold Awards and one Silver Award for its Andante brand.

“The awards cel­e­brate the excel­lent work of our entire team and affirm our ded­i­ca­tion to the best agri­cul­tural, milling and pro­duc­tion prac­tices of which we are capa­ble,” co-owner Willie Duminy told Olive Oil Times.

Porterville Olives earned two Gold Awards for its Favolosa and Nocellara del Belice mono­va­ri­etals and the Silver Award for a del­i­cate blend.

Duminy said Porterville’s NYIOOC awards prove the west­ern part of the Western Cape Province has the pro­duc­ers, exper­tise, cli­mate and ter­roir needed for world-class olive oil pro­duc­tion.

“Our Andante brand cel­e­brates this and has achieved con­sid­er­able trac­tion and acclaim, thanks to the sup­port and encour­age­ment pro­vided by the NYIOOC awards,” he said.

Duminy described the recent har­vest on Wêreldsgeluk Olive Estate, where the com­pany pro­duces its olive oil, as slightly below aver­age.

He said day­time tem­per­a­tures dur­ing the early har­vest were high, requir­ing fruit cool­ing before crush­ing. Intermittent inter­rup­tions of the elec­tric­ity sup­ply due to load-shed­ding also made the tim­ing of the har­vest and cool­ing oper­a­tions dif­fi­cult.

“Otherwise, we gen­er­ally had favor­able con­di­tions and a con­ge­nial har­vest,” he said, adding that the trees enjoy a good bal­ance of sun­shine, rain and wind due to the favor­able envi­ron­ment and cli­mate.

“We care for them, feed them and keep them healthy to the best of our abil­ity since they are the true prog­en­i­tors of our olive oil,” Duminy said. ​“We care­fully con­trol the tem­per­a­ture of the fruit before wash­ing and crush­ing and keep our plant and pro­duc­tion facil­ity metic­u­lously clean.”

He added that observ­ing the paste, tast­ing it and assess­ing the aroma and mouth­feel of their oils through­out the process pro­vide mean­ing­ful feed­back and inform adjust­ments they make to the pro­cess­ing para­me­ters.

Nick Wilkinson, the co-owner of Rio Largo Olive Estate, also located between Robertson and Ashton in the Western Cape, was another famil­iar face at the NYIOOC, win­ning a Gold Award.

“[Winning at the NYIOOC] demon­strates that our lit­tle cor­ner of the globe, not known for olive oil pro­duc­tion, can excel qual­ity-wise,” Wilkinson told Olive Oil Times.

“Our pro­duc­tion in the Southern Hemisphere is released into inter­na­tional mar­kets when Northern Hemisphere oils are already six to seven months old,” he said, ​“Given our qual­ity pro­file as adju­di­cated in the NYIOOC, we can offer pre­mium qual­ity fresh oil to dis­cern­ing con­sumers glob­ally for release in July each year.”

Wilkinson said their con­sis­tent record of suc­cess at the NYIOOC over the past years gives cre­dence to their qual­ity pro­file in the inter­na­tional mar­ket.

“Another win builds on our cred­i­bil­ity that we are not a one-year won­der,” he said. ​“We don’t need to stand back for the tra­di­tional pro­duc­ers from the Mediterranean basin, but rather com­pete head-on with the ben­e­fit of fresh oil in July each year.”

“There are chal­lenges every year as sea­sons and crop yields dif­fer from heavy to light,” Wilkinson added. ​“It is sim­ply my job as the oil maker to adapt pro­cess­ing pat­terns to pro­duce the best pos­si­ble qual­ity.”

Wilkinson said that as a devel­op­ing region, South Africa faces addi­tional chal­lenges of an unre­li­able state infra­struc­ture with peri­odic elec­tric­ity black-outs, poor roads and the bur­den of a poorly trained civil ser­vice.

“But hey, this is nor­mal for us, and we sim­ply han­dle it,” he said. ​“Rio Largo invested in a solar energy plant to make us self-reliant [from load shed­ding], and so it will go on.”