Tunisian Olive Oils Reach New Heights in World Competition

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Part of our con­tin­u­ing cov­er­age of the 2020 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

Tunisian pro­duc­ers earned a record-high 21 awards at the 2020 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, four more than the pre­vi­ous record set at last year’s edi­tion of the con­test.

The much-needed rains pre­ced­ing the North African country’s har­vest seemed to be an omen of good things to come.

Despite polit­i­cal upheaval and a decrease in olive oil prices, pro­duc­ers from the world’s largest olive oil pro­ducer out­side of the European Union earned a record-high 12 Gold Awards and nine Silvers at the NYIOOC.

“I feel very proud,” said Olivko founder and owner Karim Fitouri, about the three Gold Awards his com­pany received. ​“It con­firms that the things I am doing are cor­rect.”

Olivko won the Golds for its del­i­cate Wild Cultivar, del­i­cate Chemlali and medium Chetoui, all of which are organic.

Fitouri, whose farm is in the Dougga Valley, in Tunisia’s north­west­ern Beja region, said the key fac­tors to his suc­cess are his atten­tion to detail, long-term think­ing and pas­sion for olive oil. However, he said hard work is by far the biggest deter­min­ing fac­tor in this year’s suc­cess.

“It wipes out all the tired­ness and rewards the hard work I went through dur­ing the har­vest sea­son in order to pro­duce such great qual­ity olive oil,” Fitouri said.

The Al Rajhi El Ferjani Food Industry Company was also among the big Tunisian win­ners, tak­ing home a Gold for their del­i­cate Chetoui and a Silver for their medium Chetoui.

Atef Ferjani, the company’s exec­u­tive man­ager, said that he was very pleased with the result and that the two awards are great recog­ni­tion for his team’s hard work dur­ing what was an excep­tional year for them.

“I feel very proud and thank­ful that we have won these pres­ti­gious awards,” he said. ​“For us, it is a great chal­lenge we have accom­plished. The Carthagene Olivos brand is like our old­est son and we are proud that he achieved his first vic­tory in his first global com­pe­ti­tion.”

For Ferjani, these awards cap off what has already been a very good crop year for him and his team, which began with the instal­la­tion of a new mill.

“For us, 2019 was an excep­tional year,” he said. ​“We com­pleted the instal­la­tion of the olive oil extrac­tion plant in October 2019; the tanks were installed in November, which came one month behind the har­vest in Tunisia.”

“But this delay has given us more con­fi­dence that even with the late start, we could achieve our goals,” he added.

Another big win­ner at the 2020 NYIOOC was the French com­pany, HDPM, which pro­duces its Parcelle 26 brand of olive oil in Tunisia.

The com­pany won three Gold Awards at this year’s com­pe­ti­tion, improv­ing on the pre­vi­ous year’s per­for­mance, in which they won two Golds and a Silver. The awards came for two medium Arbequina mono­va­ri­etals and one medium Arbequina blend.

“This year, Parcelle 26 has accom­plished a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone by installing its new olive mill on-farm,” Mouna Berdi, the company’s busi­ness devel­oper, said. ​“This was really chal­leng­ing for us and we believe that it will open new hori­zons and allow us to give con­sumers the best prod­uct that we can.”

Berdi said if there is a secret to their suc­cess, it would be the word con­trol, from the fruit set­ting through the har­vest and up to the moment of bot­tling.

“It’s not an easy task mak­ing pre­mium qual­ity olive oil,” Berdi said. ​“Each year there are a few sur­prises.”

Domaine Adonis capped a suc­cess­ful year with two Silver Awards.

The com­pany pro­duces extra vir­gin olive oil from Koroneiki olives using tra­di­tional har­vest­ing meth­ods and the 2019/2020 sea­son was for­tu­itous for the com­pany, owner Ben Ayed Salah said.

“2019 was an excep­tional year for our field apart from a lack of man­power due to a record har­vest in Tunisia. Our chal­lenge was to pro­duce for our first year an excel­lent qual­ity oil with our own two-phase oil mill,” Ayed Salah said.

Blend No. 3, a medium inten­sity blend, and Koroneiki No. 5, a medium Koroneiki, were the win­ning oils.

“We are proud and happy to have been medaled by this pres­ti­gious com­pe­ti­tion for our first inter­na­tional trip,” said Ayed Salah.

The Tunisian pro­ducer Viaraya won two awards for a pair of its organic mono­va­ri­etals.

The com­pany picked up a Gold Award for its Oleastra Sahli brand, an organic del­i­cate Sehli, and a Silver Award for its organic medium Chetoui.

“Hard work always pays off in the end,” owner Raya Abid said. ​“My team and I are so happy to be awarded!”

Abid said that while the end result was sat­is­fy­ing, there many headaches along the way to pro­duc­ing the two win­ning oils.

“Our mill is still under con­struc­tion, so it was dif­fi­cult to find the ​‘right’ mill with the machines and the hygiene norms we wanted,” Abid said. ​“Then we had to rent it out entirely, so our mae­stro could use it exclu­sively for Oleastra. There were also other headaches of course, includ­ing olive trans­porta­tion, find­ing the right tim­ing and tem­per­a­ture, as well other logis­tics.”