Latin American Producers Celebrate Another Successful Year at NYIOOC

Widespread droughts across Latin America dried up the num­ber of entries from the region to the 2020 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, but not the qual­ity of the olive oils.

Producers from five dif­fer­ent coun­tries com­bined to send in 28 entries and received 14 awards, of which eight were Silvers and six were Golds.

The biggest win­ners at the world’s pre­mier olive oil qual­ity con­test were Chilean pro­duc­ers, how­ever, who earned a com­bined three Gold and three Silver Awards.

“This is huge for us,” Claudio Lovazzano, the mar­ket­ing man­ager of Olivos del Sur, told Olive Oil Times. ​“We are very happy and hon­ored to be among the win­ners. This is not only a recog­ni­tion of all our pre­vi­ous efforts, but the com­mit­ment that we have to all of our loyal cus­tomers, part­ners, work­ers, and of course, to our high-qual­ity process.”

Olivos del Sur earned a Gold Award for their O‑Live & Co brand, a medium blend. Lovazzano said that the tim­ing of the har­vest is what sets O‑Live & Co apart from so many other olive oils and part of why the oil earned a Gold Award in its first year at the com­pe­ti­tion.

“Our first cold extrac­tion process is done in just three to four hours, and we do this with a deep respect for the envi­ron­ment and our com­mu­nity,” Lovazzano said.

He added that he expects the award will help boost sales in the United States, far and away the largest for­eign mar­ket for Olivos del Sur as well as many other Chilean pro­duc­ers.

“On a crowded shelf, with some­times lit­tle or no avail­able infor­ma­tion at all, it’s dif­fi­cult to stand out,” Lovazzano said. ​“An award from a pres­ti­gious com­pe­ti­tion like the NYIOOC is a huge recog­ni­tion, and of course, it’s a fresh moti­va­tion to keep doing what we like most: craft­ing high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil!”

Chile’s other Gold Award-win­ner was Alonso Olive Oil, which was awarded for a medium Coratina. The O’Higgins-based pro­ducer also earned a Silver Award for a medium blend.

José Manuel Reyes said the awards were great news for the pro­duc­ers and con­firm that they con­tinue to move in the right direc­tion with their pro­duc­tion prac­tices and tech­niques.

He added that after the pro­longed drought that Chile has faced, it was good to see that the qual­ity of the oils had not suf­fered.

“Last year, we faced a drought that affected Chile greatly,” Manuel Reyes said. ​“The rains were scarce and we were still strug­gling from 2018, which was also a very dry and hot year. It was a tremen­dous chal­lenge since we had to man­age and opti­mize in the best way the water that we had avail­able.”

While pro­duc­ers through­out Latin America cited the lack of rain as one of their biggest chal­lenges, drought was not the only one that faced Chilean pro­duc­ers.

“Our main chal­lenge was the low pro­duc­tion of the orchard, which was affected by spring frost events,” Felipe Valle, the export man­ager of Aura Olive Oil, told Olive Oil Times. ​“It was a prob­lem for pro­duc­ers, in gen­eral.”

However, the pro­ducer, which is based in the country’s fer­tile Central Valley, still came away from the NYIOOC with two Silver Awards, for a medium and del­i­cate blend.

“We are happy, espe­cially since we con­tinue to cor­rob­o­rate the high qual­ity of our oils year after year with the panel of experts in this con­test,” Valle said. ​“One of our main objec­tives is to be con­sis­tent over time with the pro­files of our brands and we think that we have achieved it.”

Valle said that Aura Olive Oil will send news of its awards to its clients, some­thing the com­pany does every year. This helps to strengthen exist­ing bonds and also opens up to the door to enter­ing new mar­kets and cre­at­ing new rela­tion­ships.

“Without a doubt, this is a source of pride, when sell­ing a qual­ity prod­uct, and in turn our clients will be able to com­mu­ni­cate it to the final con­sumer, increas­ing their loy­alty and sales,” he said.

On the other side of the Andes Mountains, a pair of Argentine pro­duc­ers also cel­e­brated their tri­umphs at the 2020 NYIOOC. Overall, Argentines earned four awards at this year’s com­pe­ti­tion: two Gold and two Silver.

“It is a great sat­is­fac­tion to make olive oils using mechan­i­cal meth­ods and to be able to obtain a final prod­uct of excel­lent qual­ity, accord­ing to a very demand­ing audi­ence, such as the jury of the NYIOOC,” Patricia Calderón, the direc­tor of Establecimiento Olivum, told Olive Oil Times.

The San Juan-based pro­ducer earned a Gold Award for a medium blend and a Silver Award for a medium Coratina at this year’s NYIOOC.

Calderón said the biggest chal­lenge fac­ing Argentine pro­duc­ers is the inabil­ity to deter­mine the sale price of their final prod­uct (due to infla­tion and volatile olive oil prices), which has led the com­pany to con­tinue seek­ing ways to pro­duce oil more effi­ciently.

“Our biggest chal­lenge is to com­pete in a mar­ket where we do not put the price of the final prod­uct, which forces us year after year to improve our effi­ciency, seek­ing to reduce our costs,” she said.

Some of these same efforts to increase the effi­ciency of the har­vest have also helped main­tain the company’s high-qual­ity stan­dards.

“Our extra vir­gin olive oils are made with green olives, milled two hours after har­vest and with the tem­per­a­ture and grind­ing time-con­trolled,” Calderón said.

Mendoza-based Olivum Laur was the other win­ning Argentine pro­ducer, earn­ing a Gold and Silver Award as well.

While it was no great sur­prise to see Chilean and Argentine pro­duc­ers receive mul­ti­ple awards from the NYIOOC, Olibaja became the first Mexican pro­ducer to win at the world’s most pres­ti­gious olive oil qual­ity com­pe­ti­tion since 2018.

“We are very happy and excited,” man­ager Susana Zamora told Olive Oil Times. ​“We were hop­ing to win an award. It was well worth all the work of the Olibaja team.”

“I think the award will have a large impact on our brand,” she added. ​“It is a great honor to be the only Mexican brand that par­tic­i­pated at the NYIOOC. That inspires us to try harder and harder.”

Olibaja, which is located in north­ern Baja California, won a Silver Award for their medium blend of Mission and Manzanilla olives.

Zamora said this year’s award was espe­cially grat­i­fy­ing after cop­ing with a tough drought on the north­west­ern Mexican penin­sula.

“The biggest chal­lenge we faced last year was the water short­age in the Valle de Guadalupe area of Baja California,” she said. ​“Each har­vest, it is increas­ingly crit­i­cal for ensur­ing our pro­duc­tion.”

Nearly 6,000 miles south­east of Valle de Guadalupe, one of Brazil’s award-win­ning pro­duc­ers also wor­ried about the unusu­ally dry weather dur­ing the har­vest.

“Rio Grande do Sul had the biggest drought in decades,” Rafael Marchetti, the direc­tor of Prosperato, told Olive Oil Times. ​“For a large period of the har­vest it was great for the qual­ity of the extra vir­gin olive oils because their high con­tent of polyphe­nols was being pre­served by the lack of water, but at the end of the har­vest the olive trees were really suf­fer­ing, and we were a lit­tle bit wor­ried about it.”

Fortunately for Marchetti and the rest of the pro­duc­ers in Rio Grande do Sul, rain came shortly after the har­vest.

At the 2020 NYIOOC, Brazilian pro­duc­ers earned one Gold and two Silver awards. Marchetti and Prosperato received a Gold Award for their del­i­cate Koroneiki and a Silver Award for their del­i­cate blend, while com­pa­tri­ots Azeite Batalha earned a Silver Award for a del­i­cate Koroneiki.

Marchetti wel­comed the awards as a piece of good news in an oth­er­wise dif­fi­cult start to 2020.

“Receiving awards is always great for improv­ing our brand,” he said. ​“We see this as a con­stant con­fir­ma­tion of the good results that we get from every har­vest, and these awards are part of what keeps our cus­tomers trust­ing in our work year after year.”

Marchetti said that the world knows that Brazilian olive oil pro­duc­tion is very new and through win­ning awards at inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tions, pro­duc­ers such as him­self can show the world that their coun­try is rapidly mov­ing in the right direc­tion.

“We believe that we are only fol­low­ing the best rec­om­men­da­tions for mak­ing the best extra vir­gin olive oil pos­si­ble,” he said. ​“The olive oil world knows that here in Brazil we are just at the begin­ning, so we still have a lot to learn, and that is the same thought we have had since we started nine years ago.”

“We are not in this busi­ness to do what the oth­ers who have come before us have done, but to do some­thing dif­fer­ent,” Marchetti added. ​“That is only pos­si­ble because we care about deliv­er­ing the fresh­est olive oil pos­si­ble to our cus­tomers, and that is basi­cally what makes our extra vir­gin olive oils dif­fer­ent from many oth­ers.”