U.S. Olive Oil Producers Win Big at World Competition

Summary

U.S.-based farm­ers and millers have shown they can pro­duce high-qual­ity olive oils that match those from Old World coun­ter­parts, win­ning 92 awards at the 2025 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition. Producers in California, Oregon, and Arizona have over­come chal­lenges to craft award-win­ning oils, with the 2024/25 har­vest show­ing a notable increase in pro­duc­tion and qual­ity com­pared to pre­vi­ous years.

With on-again, off-again tar­iffs in the news, there has been a con­stant reminder that the United States pro­duces less than three per­cent of the olive oil it con­sumes.

However, U.S.-based farm­ers and millers have again proven they can pro­duce high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils that match those from their Old World coun­ter­parts.

Farmers and millers from Arizona, California and Oregon com­bined to win 92 awards at the 2025 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, the third-high­est total since the com­pe­ti­tion began in 2013.

From early frosts in Oregon to unpre­dictable weather and ris­ing labor costs in California, pro­duc­ers over­came a grow­ing list of famil­iar chal­lenges to craft well-bal­anced, fla­vor­ful, and defect-free olive oils.

California Olive Ranch (COR), the country’s largest pro­ducer, won awards for five 100-per­cent California prod­ucts and two of its ​“Global Blends.” The com­pany also won awards for its Lucini brands, which were pro­duced in Italy.

Mary Mori, COR’s vice pres­i­dent of qual­ity and prod­uct, said the COR team was ​“immensely excited” about the news of the awards. The unprece­dented haul moti­vated the com­pany to con­tinue solid­i­fy­ing its com­mit­ment to qual­ity.

“We take pride in the awards and results and always review the feed­back shared in the analy­sis for both win­ning and non-win­ning oils,” she said. ​“We then share this with our team to iden­tify areas for improve­ment.”

“One dif­fer­ence of NYOOC is its focus on over­all qual­ity and good taste rather than indi­vid­ual judge pref­er­ences,” Mori added. ​“This allows us to bet­ter con­trol our processes, whether by mod­i­fy­ing the oils we pur­chase or by adjust­ing our own har­vest tim­ing to pri­or­i­tize fresher, early-har­vest oils.”

This year’s awards come after what Mori described as a plen­ti­ful har­vest com­pared to pre­vi­ous years. 

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, U.S. olive oil pro­duc­tion slightly exceeded the five-year aver­age, reach­ing 10,000 met­ric tons in the 2024/25 crop year. The vast major­ity of this pro­duc­tion is located in California.

“While it’s typ­i­cally an alter­nate bear­ing year, we’ve imple­mented farm­ing changes, focus­ing on irri­ga­tion and pre­cise deficit irri­ga­tion tech­niques, to bet­ter sta­bi­lize and sig­nif­i­cantly improve the qual­ity of the olives deliv­ered to the mill,” Mori said.

While many of the country’s largest pro­duc­ers — includ­ing Corto Olive, which earned a Silver Award, and Baltimore-based Pompeian, which claimed three Gold Awards — cel­e­brated their NYIOOC suc­cesses, small-scale pro­duc­ers also show­cased their abil­ity to craft award-win­ning olive oils.

In the pro­lific olive oil-pro­duc­ing region of Paso Robles, Marcum Olive Oil earned two Gold Awards for a pair of mono­va­ri­etals.

“Winning these awards serves as an inspi­ra­tion to con­tin­u­ing our com­mit­ment to qual­ity, fresh­ness and per­fect­ing our olive oil-mak­ing craft,” co-owner Lonnie Marcum said.

“California pro­duces the vast major­ity of the olive oil in the U.S.,” she added. ​“This recog­ni­tion brings not only pres­tige and cred­i­bil­ity to California, but also increased vis­i­bil­ity among con­sumers who seek out the very finest extra vir­gin olive oils in the world.”

The Central California pro­ducer over­came unpre­dictable weather using sus­tain­able grow­ing tech­niques and organic olive fruit fly man­age­ment to pro­duce its hand-har­vested, award-win­ning oils.

“2024 was an inter­est­ing grow­ing year,” co-owner Grant Marcum said. ​“One of our vari­eties, Coratina, pro­duced twice as much as the prior year, while the other trees, the Itrana, pro­duced about half as much.”

About 2.5 hours south on high­way U.S. 101, the pro­duc­ers behind Ojai Olive Oil Company marked a fruit­ful end to the har­vest, win­ning four Silver Awards.

“It’s always very sat­is­fy­ing to win at the NYIOOC,” owner Philip Asquith said. ​“This year’s wins bring our total to over 20 awards, which is won­der­ful. We’re quite proud of our medals, and have all the tro­phies on dis­play in our tast­ing room.”

Along with his fel­low Californians, Asquith touted the role of the NYIOOC in pro­mot­ing California extra vir­gin olive oil to local con­sumers.

“Our cus­tomers are sur­prised and impressed to hear that California olive oils win so many awards,” Asquith said. ​“They also like know­ing that California has very high stan­dards for what can be called ​‘extra vir­gin’ here. People often don’t know how far the indus­try has come in this region.”

While the 2024/25 crop year pro­duced high-qual­ity olives, Asquith said the quan­tity was lower than the bumper har­vest of 2023/24. As has increas­ingly become the case, he high­lighted hir­ing work­ers for the har­vest as one of the biggest chal­lenges.

“The biggest chal­lenge we faced this past sea­son was the cost of pick­ing,” Asquith con­firmed. ​“Every other aspect of our oper­a­tion has been quite con­sis­tent year to year, but the har­vest­ing expenses have gone up quite a bit in recent years. It’s man­age­able for us, but has become the sin­gle biggest cost com­po­nent in mak­ing a bot­tle of olive oil.”

On the oppo­site end of California, Apollo Olive Oil cel­e­brated win­ning two Gold Awards at the World Competition for a pair of organic blends.

Winning at the NYIOOC ​“helps small pro­duc­ers like our­selves to have third-party con­fir­ma­tion that your olive oil is of high qual­ity,” part­ner Steve McCulley said. ​“Because of the high stan­dards of NYIOOC, its results are highly regarded in California.”

“The new rank­ing sys­tem shines a light on pro­duc­ers who have con­sis­tently earned top marks over the years, mak­ing it eas­ier for con­sumers to find high-qual­ity oils,” said the pro­ducer of the world’s sec­ond-high­est ranked olive oil.

While Apollo Olive Oil faced adverse weather events in 2024, McCulley said the har­vest was con­sis­tently high qual­ity. The main dif­fer­ence he saw was that it started later than usual. 

However, he added that the main chal­lenges for pro­duc­ing award-win­ning qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil remain con­stant.

“Organizing har­vest to get suf­fi­cient pick­ers to hand pick, sched­ul­ing effi­cient deliv­ery of olives to the mill, and fine-tun­ing our spe­cial mill that greatly reduces oxi­da­tion dur­ing pro­cess­ing all require care­ful plan­ning,” McCulley said.

Not far from Apollo Olive Oil, the pro­duc­ers behind Organic Roots also cel­e­brated their World Competition suc­cess, win­ning Gold Awards for organic Arbequina and Koroneiki mono­va­ri­etals.

“Winning two Golds at the NYIOOC feels incred­i­ble,” the Polit fam­ily said. ​“We are a fam­ily-owned and oper­ated busi­ness, and when it’s olive har­vest time, it’s all hands on deck. To win Golds while com­pet­ing inter­na­tion­ally shows how much our hard work pays off.”

The Polits added that the awards also help boost the rep­u­ta­tion of California organic extra vir­gin olive oil on the global stage.

“Winning awards at the NYIOOC not only boosts the rep­u­ta­tion of indi­vid­ual pro­duc­ers but also ele­vates the per­cep­tion of California extra vir­gin olive oil as a whole,” the fam­ily said. ​“It serves as a tes­ta­ment to the state’s com­mit­ment to qual­ity and inno­va­tion in organic olive oil pro­duc­tion.”

While Organic Roots enjoyed a har­vest rebound in 2024/25 com­pared to the pre­vi­ous two crop years, unpre­dictable weather is always the com­pa­ny’s main har­vest chal­lenge.

“​The 2024/25 organic olive oil har­vest marked a notable recov­ery in pro­duc­tion and qual­ity com­pared to the pre­vi­ous two chal­leng­ing sea­sons,” the Polits said. ​“With a com­bi­na­tion of timely rains dur­ing win­ter and cooler, steady spring tem­per­a­tures have sup­ported strong tree devel­op­ment with­out the extremes that usu­ally hurt organic yields.”

While California dom­i­nates U.S. extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­tion in quan­tity, award-win­ning qual­ity can be found beyond the Golden State.

In neigh­bor­ing Arizona, Queen Creek Olive Mill earned four Silver Awards.

“Winning four Silver Awards at the 2025 NYIOOC is an incred­i­ble honor and a tes­ta­ment to our team’s ded­i­ca­tion to craft­ing excep­tional extra vir­gin olive oil,” pres­i­dent John Rea said.

He added that the awards also serve as a barom­e­ter, allow­ing Arizona’s only com­mer­cial olive mill to mea­sure where they stand com­pared to domes­tic and inter­na­tional com­peti­tors.

“These awards sig­nif­i­cantly ele­vate the per­cep­tion of Arizona extra vir­gin olive oil, both locally and beyond,” Rea said. ​“Many peo­ple are sur­prised to learn that high-qual­ity olive oil can be pro­duced in Arizona’s desert envi­ron­ment, and NYIOOC recog­ni­tion helps dis­pel skep­ti­cism.”

Rea acknowl­edged that the company’s World Competition suc­cess was partly fueled by favor­able weather con­di­tions in the pre­vi­ous har­vest. He added that the sit­u­a­tion is look­ing good in the olive groves ahead of the com­ing crop year.

“The pri­mary chal­lenge was tim­ing the har­vest in Arizona’s unique desert-con­ti­nen­tal cli­mate, which dif­fers from other U.S. olive-grow­ing regions,” he said. ​“We mon­i­tor the grove closely from November into December to ensure the olives are har­vested at opti­mal ripeness, bal­anc­ing qual­ity with weather risks like sud­den tem­per­a­ture drops.”

On the other side of California, two pro­duc­ers in Oregon were awarded at the World Competition. Dark Hollow Farm in south­ern Oregon’s Rogue Valley earned a Gold and Silver Award in its NYIOOC debut.

Further north, Oregonian olive oil pio­neer and peren­nial World Competition win­ner Durant Olive Mill added four more Gold awards and a Silver Award to its col­lec­tion.

Owner Paul Durant said that ​“it feels great” to win at the NYIOOC and know all the oils the com­pany sub­mit­ted were top-tier, espe­cially its pop­u­lar Arbequina mono­va­ri­etal.

“As always, third-party val­i­da­tion is so impor­tant for con­sumers,” Durant said. ​“We have to source fruit out of Northern California, and peo­ple are always inter­ested in how we han­dle that logis­ti­cally and if there are any impacts on qual­ity.” 

“We obvi­ously have great quan­ti­ta­tive data indi­cat­ing extra vir­gin grade, but the awards from NYIOOC ham­mer home the point that we are able to craft world-class, high-qual­ity olive oil right here in Dayton, Oregon,” he added.

Due to its north­ern lat­i­tude com­pared to many other olive oil-pro­duc­ing regions, Durant said com­plet­ing the har­vest ahead of the win­ter frost and snow is always chal­leng­ing.

“The biggest issue for us is length, weather and logis­tics,” he said. ​“We started grape har­vest in late August and did not fin­ish milling until December 15^th.”

“We had some early-sea­son freez­ing weather, and if it had­n’t been for our new frost con­trol wind machines, we would have lost a good por­tion of our estate fruit,” Durant added. ​“Instead, we were able to get it all har­vested at the time of our choos­ing and did not have our hand forced by the weather.”

Overall, the com­pany processed over 330 U.S. tons of olives this year and had a ​“fan­tas­tic” sea­son in its two-year-old state-of-the-art Pieralisi mill.

“We hit the inter­sec­tion of amaz­ing qual­ity and fan­tas­tic yield. In an era of ris­ing costs across the board, hav­ing such great yield really helped to keep our unit costs down,” Durant said. ​“We don’t expect to raise any of our prices in 2025.”

Producers were opti­mistic about the 2025/26 crop year but cau­tioned that it is still very early in the sea­son and plenty will change through­out the spring and sum­mer.

“We have a great bloom on the trees, and can already tell that it’s going to be a big har­vest for 25/26,” Asquith of Ojai Olive Oil Company said. ​“Even with min­i­mal rain this win­ter, the trees seem very happy and are packed with blos­soms right now.”

“Right now, the trees are look­ing healthy and the buds are look­ing good,” Grant Marcum added.

For her part, Mori from COR said that late rain and cool weather in February and March delayed tree growth and bloom­ing, so it remains too early to tell how the har­vest will develop.

“The buds we’re observ­ing look promis­ing, but the true pic­ture will emerge in a month or two once the fruit set is estab­lished after flow­er­ing,” she said. ​“In pre­vi­ous years with delayed flow­er­ing, we antic­i­pated a late har­vest; how­ever, sum­mer heat pre­vented this, so the out­come of this year remains uncer­tain. Overall, things look good, and we antic­i­pate a fruit­ful sea­son.”

Meanwhile, Durant said the sit­u­a­tion in Oregon looks good so far. ​“The trees here a just start­ing to wake up, and we will see how things unfold and hope for the best,” he con­cluded.