Golden Year for Tuscan Producers as Early NYIOOC Results Unfold

Summary

The 2020 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition has begun, with Tuscan olive oil pro­duc­ers like Fattoria Ramerino win­ning Gold Awards for their blends, while newer pro­duc­ers like Vazart & Sons also achieved suc­cess after revi­tal­iz­ing aban­doned olive trees near Florence. In addi­tion to tra­di­tional pro­duc­ers, super-inten­sive farms like Olive Grove Partners are also win­ning awards, show­cas­ing that inno­v­a­tive meth­ods and tech­nol­ogy can lead to high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­tion in just a few years.

The long wait has finally ended as the first days of the 2020 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition have come to a close.

While farm­ers, pro­duc­ers and experts from all over the world will fol­low the com­pe­ti­tion as its results are unfold­ing this week, the first round of win­ners have already put the spot­light on some promi­nent Tuscan olive oil pro­duc­ers.

“We are used to fol­low­ing the NYIOOC award night every year,” Filippo Alampi, owner of organic-cer­ti­fied pro­ducer, Fattoria Ramerino, told Olive Oil Times. ​“This year, every­thing has to hap­pen on the inter­net and it has been very reward­ing to see the Gold Awards being given to both of the olive oils that we sent to the com­pe­ti­tion.”

Fattoria Ramerino picked up their Gold Award for Guadagnolo Primus.

“It is our his­toric blend,” Alampi said. ​“It has been our first olive oil to reach the mar­ket. Thanks to its qual­ity, our com­pany has been able to grow. It is an extra vir­gin olive oil made pri­mar­ily from the Moraiolo cul­ti­var blended with Frantoio, Leccino and Pendolino vari­eties.”

The other Ramerino pro­duc­tion to win Gold was the Cultivar Frantoio, which came as the result of the com­pa­ny’s expe­ri­ence in the field.

“It is an oil entirely ded­i­cated to a sin­gle cul­ti­var,” Alampi said. ​“Still, it is a blend of indi­vid­ual olive pro­cess­ing ses­sions. We taste and eval­u­ate the prod­uct of each press­ing ses­sion and for this blend we chose only the oil that most char­ac­ter­izes the cul­ti­var.”

Many of the high-qual­ity olive oils pro­duced in Tuscany are a result of the region’s his­toric cul­ture, com­plete with spe­cific har­vest­ing and milling tra­di­tions.

However, for the Gold Award-win­ning extra vir­gin olive oil from Vazart & Sons, it took just three years to achieve such a pres­ti­gious award.

“Three years ago we found these olive trees com­pletely aban­doned. They had been left alone for almost 20 years,” Alexander Vazart, owner of a 5,000-tree farm near Florence, told Olive Oil Times.

“The first year we just har­vested the lit­tle that was there, but we started work­ing on them and prun­ing them,” he added. ​“We also had to face bad weather and a severe olive fruit fly infes­ta­tion.”

Still after just three short years, the result­ing oil has been cat­a­pulted onto the Official Guide to the World’s Best Olive Oils.

“I had a bad expe­ri­ence with the fly, so we took olives only from those trees that were not touched by the insect,” Vazart said. ​“It meant we had to give up a por­tion of the pro­duc­tion, but we still met our qual­ity tar­gets.”

The Vazart fam­ily har­vested 500 kilo­grams (1,100 lbs) of olives per day dur­ing the 2019/20 har­vest sea­son.

“Every sin­gle night of the har­vest­ing sea­son, I would bring the olives to a ded­i­cated oil mill myself and come back in later the night with the oil,” Vazart said.

The result of these long hours and hard work was an extra vir­gin olive oil that the judges said offered tast­ing sen­sa­tions of herbs, fig leaf, pep­per, radish and olive leaf.

Along with tra­di­tion­ally pro­duced oils from the hal­lowed region, a super-inten­sive pro­ducer, the Olive Grove Partners, was also among the Gold Award win­ners at this year’s edi­tion of the NYIOOC.

“We are very happy for the Gold Award, even more so con­sid­er­ing that we began our activ­ity just a few years ago, in 2017,” Andrea Sozzi Sabatini, owner of the com­pany that pro­duced Etrusco Sostenuto said.

“This award will help oth­ers to under­stand that super-inten­sive olive farm­ing does not hin­der the prod­uct qual­ity,” Sabatini said. ​“Our Etrusco Sostenuto is a medium blended oil, its name comes from the Italian music notes known all over the world.”

Innovation is key to the farm, Sabatini, whose com­pany has adopted robotic means and tech­nol­ogy for many of its oper­a­tions, said.

“Our expe­ri­ence shows that, in just a few years, a super-inten­sive farm can begin to pro­duce not only good quan­ti­ties of olive oil but also extra vir­gin olive oil of the best qual­ity.”