Torres Family Expands Legacy With Award-Winning Results

Summary

The Torres fam­ily, known for their wine pro­duc­tion in Catalonia, has expanded into olive oil pro­duc­tion and gourmet food exports, earn­ing pres­ti­gious awards for their high-qual­ity oils. Despite chal­lenges like drought and cli­mate change, Torres Import remains focused on pro­duc­ing unique, high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils and main­tain­ing authen­tic­ity and qual­ity in the mar­ket. Their busi­ness includes a sig­nif­i­cant focus on exports, par­tic­u­larly to the United States, where they nav­i­gate chal­lenges such as tar­iffs to ensure their prod­ucts reach con­sumers.

Over the past four cen­turies, the Torres fam­ily has been involved in grape grow­ing and wine mak­ing in the north­west­ern Spanish region of Catalonia.

However, the fifth-gen­er­a­tion wine­mak­ers have since expanded into extra-vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­tion and gourmet food exports, main­tain­ing a metic­u­lous ded­i­ca­tion to detail that helped pro­pel the wine brand to become one of the world’s most renowned.

“Torres Import was founded in 1978 with the aim of offer­ing the finest food prod­ucts in Europe,” Magda Martí Vargas, the company’s com­mer­cial man­ager, told Olive Oil Times.

“At that time, it was a gourmet prod­uct dis­trib­u­tor that, over the years, and given the qual­ity of the estates owned by the Torres fam­ily, took the ini­tia­tive to pro­duce extra vir­gin olive oils and wine vine­gars from our olive trees,” she added.

Torres Import pro­duces olive oil from its grove of cen­te­nary and younger olive trees on the Purgatori estate in L’Aranyó, Lleida, about 90 kilo­me­ters north­west of Barcelona. 

Since 2017, the export branch of the fam­ily com­pany has reg­u­larly par­tic­i­pated in the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, earn­ing a Gold Award at the 2025 edi­tion for its Eterno brand, a medium-inten­sity Arbequina. The brand was pre­vi­ously awarded in 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2023.

The com­pany has also been awarded for its Purgatori brand in 2021 and 2022, pro­duced from 400-year-old Picudo, Rojal and Farga olives, along with Arbequina.

“For us, it is an honor and priv­i­lege to have a Gold Award in recent edi­tions of NYIOOC,” Martí said. ​“In terms of pres­tige, peo­ple rec­og­nize the impor­tance of the com­pe­ti­tion, and this implies that they are aware of the work and effort involved in con­tin­u­ing to har­vest such high-qual­ity oils.”

Catalonia is the fourth-largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region in Spain, after Andalusia, Castilla-La-Mancha, and Extremadura. However, its olive har­vests have been crip­pled in recent years due to pro­longed drought. 

“In Catalonia, we expe­ri­enced a pro­longed drought. The 2022, 2023 and 2024 har­vests have been par­tic­u­larly dry through­out the year,” Martí con­firmed. ​“In 2024, a few liters of rain fell in spring, allow­ing for good ripen­ing in the cooler areas of the estate. We also have a por­tion of the estate under irri­ga­tion.”

According to data from Spain’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Catalan olive oil pro­duc­tion fell to 15,233 tons in the 2024/25 crop year, down from 32,717 tons in the pre­vi­ous year.

“Overall, we can say that the har­vest was lower than other har­vests, and the mill yields were low,” Martí said. ​“During the har­vest period, there were no rainy episodes, allow­ing the olives to be picked at their opti­mal ripeness.”

“During the 2024 har­vest, the estate’s main chal­lenge has been the accu­mu­lated drought in areas with­out sup­port irri­ga­tion,” she added. ​“Without the spring rains, the desired qual­ity would not have been achieved.”

Indeed, Catalan author­i­ties recently lifted nearly all water restric­tions in April as heavy spring rain raised reser­voir capac­ity above the 60 per­cent thresh­old.

However, regional offi­cials and Torres Import are mind­ful that this may be a reprieve and are prepar­ing for a hot­ter and drier cli­mate in the future.

“Water, as in other areas of the Mediterranean, is a scarce resource,” Martí said. ​“Climate change poses a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge. Periods of drought are expected to become more fre­quent, as are sum­mer heat waves. Irrigation will be essen­tial in the future, as will the way we obtain water via stor­ing rain­wa­ter, using recy­cled water and aquifers.”

Despite Spain’s Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food announc­ing a global goal to bol­ster pro­duc­tion and sell four mil­lion met­ric tons of olive oil annu­ally, Martí does not expect pro­duc­tion to increase in Catalonia due to cli­matic and topo­graphic lim­i­ta­tions.

“Catalonia is a small olive oil-pro­duc­ing region com­pared to other regions in Spain and around the world,” she con­firmed. ​“Its ter­rain, with numer­ous moun­tain ranges, makes it dif­fi­cult to plant large areas of olive trees. Mechanization can be chal­leng­ing, so the focus must be on pro­duc­ing unique, high-qual­ity oils.”

As a result, she said Torres Import focuses on pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil, pric­ing their final prod­uct based on the cost of pro­duc­tion and pay­ing lit­tle atten­tion to the falling olive oil prices at ori­gin in Andalusia, the world’s largest pro­ducer by a wide mar­gin. 

“Torres Import always empha­sizes prod­uct qual­ity; we focus on tast­ings and prod­uct pre­sen­ta­tion,” Martí said. ​“We don’t enter the price wars cur­rently in place in the mar­ket, as we offer authen­tic­ity and qual­ity.”

As the name sug­gests, a sig­nif­i­cant part of Torres Import’s busi­ness includes exports, espe­cially to the United States. 

Martí said the com­pany had exported the most recent har­vest ahead of the imple­men­ta­tion of a near-blan­ket ten per­cent tar­iff on imports to the U.S. and would wait to see how the sit­u­a­tion changes before mak­ing any deci­sions ahead of the 2025/26 har­vest. 

“For now, our importers pur­chased at the begin­ning of the har­vest and stocked up on prod­uct,” she said. ​“We will see how this affects us in the future; how­ever, we hope every­thing returns to nor­mal.”

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