The internal cuisine of international olive oil competitions
A bottle of wine or olive oil undoubtedly caught your attention before because of the shiny medal on it. Admittedly, terms like gold, silver, bronze or best in class sound like music to your ears. What are the most important competitions to keep an eye on and how are the parameters applied when awarding medals to extra virgin olive oil?
1. Grandeur from New York
Anyone who mentions awards and olive oil in the same breath cannot do without the NYIOOW World Olive Oil Competition, which is now in its ninth edition. This is the largest competition for extra virgin olive oil with an international commission of 21 expert probes at its helm. This competition is organized by Olive Oil Times, a leading American magazine specializing in the world of olive oil. The list guides you smoothly to olive oils that have proven to be hors category for years such as Krš from Bosnia-Herzegovina that has been stringing together the gold continuously since 2018. In addition, the top also shows significant shifts toward emerging players. For example, in 2021 Jordanian extra virgin olive oils were awarded for the first time. Not an insignificant victory since Jordan is located in the heart of the Levant, from a historical point of view the cradle of olive trees, and this desert region faced more challenging climatic conditions than ever. Also noteworthy for this edition is the dominance of Italy, which won 211 awards, including 160 gold medals. The regions around Campania and Calabria are especially worth their weight in gold. The Italians thus leave another typical olive oil country like Greece far behind. They bagged 99 awards, 45 of which were gold. Handy about NYIOOW are the indexed search criteria such as country of origin (from Japan to South Africa), fruitiness (from medium over delicate to robust) and olive variety (from arbequina olive oil to nocellara del belice). This year there were no less than 1171 entries from 28 different countries, breaking a record. In addition, a brief description of each oil and company is included, along with tasting notes and surprising food pairing tips.
2. Spanish enthusiasm
Another list to keep an eye on is the Spanish ESAO competition, organized by the renowned Escuela Superior del Aceite de Oliva: an olive oil school in Valencia that provides training and certification for professional olive oil sommeliers. One could argue that their awards are a vehicle to generate more awareness for the program. This Spanish list already has a more limited international spread compared to the NYIOOW World Olive Oil Competition – with participants from 15 countries versus 28 at NYIOOW. Interesting then are the categories in which awards are given such as the best international award, the local variety award, the best olive oil seasoning where infused oil is tested and the innovation award where the innovation is either in the product, the process or the marketing. There last edition, for example, Oliba emerged as the winner. This is a gluten-free craft beer brewed with olives from the Spanish Pyrenees, on an olive grove where, by the way, olive oil is also made under the brand name ERM Mountain Olive Oil brand. By co-exposing such initiatives, as an organization you are deviating from the essence of extra virgin olive oil.
3. Scientific neutrality
About the most prestigious olive oil competition in the world, every expert agrees: the Mario Solinas Quality Award, which has been awarded since 2001, possesses baking charisma. This year 131 samples were submitted to be judged by an international panel of the International Olive Councel (IOC), an intergovernmental organization of olive oil and table olive producing states, founded in 1959 under the auspices of the United Nations. The ranking is named after a scientist who created quite a few criteria to categorize olive oil. Medals are awarded in four categories based on fruitiness: intense fruitiness, medium fruitiness, mild fruitiness and a separate category for extra virgin olive oil from the southern hemisphere. The main objective of this competition is to select, from both hemispheres, the best olive oil with the best organoleptic characteristics. Unique to this competition is the scientific rigor in which it is mandatory for each participant to hire a notary to submit samples according to the guidelines, thus ensuring neutrality. Before the oil is judged for harmony and complexity, by the way, it is first tested for its chemical composition in a laboratory. Moreover, the IOC is not too shy to revoke awards when there is a fraudulent scent to a bottle. This happened, for example, with Oliv which was supposedly from Shanghai but was actually bottled in Cordoba, Spain.
internationaloliveoil.org/mario-solinas-quality-award/
4. The forest through the olive trees
Only one can be the best, and that includes the competitions that award extra virgin olive oil. The website evooworldranking.org ranks all competitions by importance according to established criteria such as number of entries, number of participating countries, impact on the most consuming regions, etc. On it, the Mario Solinas Quality Award reigns at number 1. You’ll also discover which olive oils have won the most awards worldwide, which countries are the absolute prize beasts and which type(s) of olive oil are usually among the winners.
5. 3 recent awards for Casa Astrid
- Casa Astrid’s ecobox received the award for Innovation, design and packaging from the ‘International olive oil makers jury Berlin Germany GOOA 2021’.
- The ‘EVO IOOC Italy International Olive Oil Contest’ awarded six medals to Casa Astrid: gold for the premium extra virgin and among the five flavor variants both gold and silver medals fell: lemon, oregano-chili pepper-look, basil, garlic and rosemary-thyme-parsley.
- Casa Astrid’s premium extra virgin olive oil was awarded a silver medal at the ‘NYIOOW World Olive Oil Competition’.
3 tips to guide you to a winning bottle
- So, to check if a competition fits the olive oil experience you are looking for, check the profile of the list. Some tops do have commercial interests and give colored advice.
- Have you discovered an olive oil in a summit that you absolutely want to taste? Then check that your bottle dates from the same award-winning batch and not from later. If you hold in your hand a winning bottle from a leading competition (with the correct logo) you can assume you have the good olive oil.
- Try to develop your own taste in olive oil by delving into extra virgin olive oil. Book olive oil workshops or participate in a tasting, do research on specific blogs of olive oil sommeliers, read articles and tips on using olive oil. In this way, you develop more of a feeling before you spend money.
Buy your internationally acclaimed bottle of olive oil now to ensure a certified quality product.
