The care­ful analy­ses of more than 850 olive oils from 26 coun­tries have begun in the offices and homes of expert tasters through­out the world — all part of an inno­v­a­tive remote-judg­ing process for the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition that was set into action amid the COVID-19 crisis.

In nor­mal times, the 16 judges would meet this week in New York, with the assis­tance of a tech­ni­cal team and sup­port staff, to deter­mine the year’s best extra vir­gin olive oils. Then the coro­n­avirus came and orga­niz­ers began design­ing the pro­to­cols for remote judg­ing now under­way in nine coun­tries around the world, most in some form of a lock­down or restricted travel.

The experts con­fer over a pri­vate video sys­tem as they taste each sam­ple and record their obser­va­tions using a state-of-the-art appli­ca­tion devel­oped by the NYIOOC that col­lects the data securely. A world­wide team of tech­ni­cians man­ages the data in real-time.

Once the results are ver­i­fied, the win­ning brands will be pub­licly unveiled in an inter­ac­tive pre­sen­ta­tion start­ing on May 11 and con­tin­u­ing each day over the course of a week, from 9:00 AM until 12:00 noon (EDT) on the offi­cial results web­site.

Sending thou­sands of tast­ing sam­ples around the world for sen­sory analy­sis was no easy task. Each entry was trans­ferred to a set of tam­per-evi­dent, dark glass con­tain­ers with zero head­space before being packed and shipped in a tem­per­a­ture-con­trolled case for pro­tec­tion and qual­ity preser­va­tion dur­ing transport.

Cord said the early results had shown the remote judg­ing sys­tem to be work­ing perfectly.

“We are com­par­ing the judges’ find­ings with sam­ples of unopened bot­tles from our tem­per­a­ture-con­trolled library and we’re find­ing no notice­able degra­da­tion, thanks to the care with which they were pre­pared and shipped,” Cord explained.

Cord said the pro­to­cols and the pro­fes­sion­al­ism of his judg­ing experts and tech­ni­cal team will ensure accu­rate results and the admin­is­tra­tion of the com­pe­ti­tion at the high­est stan­dards, even as the world con­fronts an unprece­dented cri­sis.

“We wish it weren’t nec­es­sary to do it this way,” Cord said ear­lier of the pio­neer­ing pro­gram. ​“But we are dri­ven by our mis­sion to rec­og­nize the com­mit­ment of olive oil pro­duc­ers, and this is the best way to do that under these con­di­tions. They still have prod­ucts to sell, and con­sumers still need to know which ones to buy.”

The NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, held each spring, is the world’s largest and most pres­ti­gious olive oil con­test and its annual list­ing of award win­ners is con­sid­ered the author­i­ta­tive guide to the year’s best extra vir­gin olive oils.

The com­plete results will be pre­sented on the Official Index of the World’s Best Olive Oils in a new design that will also be unveiled May 11.