Olive Oil Excellence on the Rise: Record-Breaking Achievements at the 2023 NYIOOC
The eleventh edition of the world’s largest and most prestigious olive oil quality contest ended Monday when the final winners from the Southern Hemisphere division were revealed.
There are more first-rate extra virgin olive oils today than ever before, according to the final results of the 2023 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.
These results represent, in the strongest terms, the unyielding commitment and determination by producers in every region who overcame one of the most challenging harvests in recent times to achieve excellence.
The eleventh edition of the world’s largest and most prestigious olive oil quality contest ended Monday when the final winners from the Southern Hemisphere division were revealed on the Official Guide to the World’s Best Olive Oils.
A record 1,170 entries from 30 countries were analyzed in two judging periods tailored to the opposing harvest seasons in Northern and Southern Hemisphere farms.
The competition bestowed the industry’s most coveted quality awards to a record-breaking 848 brands from around the globe.
“These results represent, in the strongest terms, the unyielding commitment and determination by producers in every region who overcame one of the most challenging harvests in recent times to achieve excellence,” Curtis Cord, the NYIOOC founder and president, told Olive Oil Times.
Over the 2022/23 crop year, extreme weather, labor shortages and economic pressures confronted producers in nearly every region, whose task is arduous even in the best conditions.
The NYIOOC analysis team, composed of expert tasters from 13 countries, scrutinized each entry’s positive characteristics, including fruitiness, bitterness and pungency. Olfactory and gustatory sensations were meticulously recorded, as were the oil’s overall harmony, complexity and persistence of the sensory qualities.
Since the first competition in 2013, the success rate of entries has risen steadily as producers have become more informed on the best practices to produce high-quality olive oils and invested in updated processing systems. Technical and educational initiatives by cooperatives, PDOs, and national agricultural organizations have contributed to a dramatic rise in quality over the period.
“The mean level of quality suggests that NYIOOC participants are a set of producers who know what they’re doing and have put in the time, effort and investments to make world-class extra virgin olive oils,” Cord said. “The defects that were commonplace in earlier editions have become rarer.”
That means excellent olive oils are more accessible than ever before. “The plethora of options we have today to experience well-crafted, delicious and healthy extra virgin olive oils was unthinkable ten years ago,” Cord said.
The NYIOOC award-winning brands are listed in the Official Guide to the World’s Best Olive Oils with tasting notes, food pairing suggestions, producer profiles and tourism opportunities for those who would like to learn about high-quality olive oils from the people who create them.