World Olive Oil Competition Releases Final Results

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The tenth edi­tion of the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition con­cluded today when the last win­ner – a Gold Award for Anfitrite, a blend from Puglia, Italy – was unveiled on the Official Guide to the World’s Best Olive Oils.

For six weeks, the results unfolded in real-time as the judges’ find­ings were ver­i­fied for more than 1,200 entries from 28 coun­tries.

It was the largest olive oil analy­sis ever con­ducted, thanks to a team of 21 expert tasters in eleven coun­tries who adhered to a remote-judg­ing pro­to­col devel­oped by the NYIOOC.

Olive oil pro­duc­ers around the world rejoiced on social net­works and through inter­na­tional media out­lets upon receiv­ing the industry’s most cov­eted qual­ity awards.

The Official Guide has been viewed more than one mil­lion times since the roll­out began in early April, by importers, dis­trib­u­tors chefs, food ser­vice pro­fes­sion­als, jour­nal­ists and con­sumers want­ing to learn about the awarded brands and the peo­ple, places and cul­tures behind them.

Producers from Italy once again led the way, earn­ing 158 qual­ity awards, fol­lowed by Spain. But the dra­matic rise of Croatian and Turkish brands to olive oil’s world stage, along with win­ning entries from China, Lebanon, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina demon­strated a com­mit­ment to qual­ity by farm­ers and pro­duc­ers through­out the world.

Producers from Croatia, the United States, Turkey, Tunisia, Brazil, South Africa and Israel earned a record-high num­ber of awards by craft­ing extra vir­gin olive oils of excep­tional qual­ity.

While the 67-per­cent suc­cess rate in this year’s con­test gave fur­ther sup­port to the upward trend in qual­ity of recent years, the 2021/22 har­vest sea­son turned out to be for­mi­da­ble, pro­duc­ers reported, with wide­spread and per­sis­tent drought, labor short­ages and count­less other chal­lenges posed by cli­mate change and the pan­demic.

Still, two out of three of the par­tic­i­pat­ing pro­duc­ers, who sub­mit­ted a record-high 1,246 elite extra vir­gin oils, were bestowed awards in this instal­ment of the indus­try’s largest and most pres­ti­gious com­pe­ti­tion.

“Receiving this award was really impor­tant for us,” said Masseria dei Nunzi’s Barbara Bibbò. ​“It is a way to show our atten­tion and care at each stage and the deter­mi­na­tion with which we carry out our work. We are immensely proud of it.”

“It is an acknowl­edge­ment of our effort and hard work,” said Ante Rupić, a pro­ducer from Šibenik, in north­ern Dalmatia, who earned a Gold Award for an Oblica mono­va­ri­etal. ​“It encour­ages us to con­tinue striv­ing for our oils to be among the best in the world.”

While there were many pro­duc­ers of estab­lished brands reassert­ing their excel­lence, there were some star­tups among the award-win­ners, too.

“We are ecsta­tic,” said Lucía Gámez, who a Gold Award for the Tropicual Reserva Familiar brand, an organic medium Picual. ​“My father just retired and I have embraced the respon­si­bil­ity of main­tain­ing our fam­ily and cul­tural her­itage, launch­ing our first organic sin­gle-estate extra vir­gin olive oil. The torch has been passed and this award is a won­der­ful begin­ning.”

By releas­ing the results in real-time through­out the judg­ing period, pro­duc­ers were able to share their dis­tinc­tions ear­lier in their annual cam­paign to move prod­ucts through the mar­ket­place. ​“The NYIOOC has a big impact and impor­tant mean­ing with respect to the mar­ket­ing in Japan,” said Toyohiro Takao, who earned a Gold Award for Takao Nouen. ​“This encour­ages me to con­tinue to pro­duce the best olives and par­tic­i­pate every year.”

The com­plete results of the 2022 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition are now avail­able on the Official Guide to the World’s Best Olive Oils.

This is a break­ing news arti­cle. Check back for updates.