The NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition concluded its annual rollout of award-winning brands today on the Official Guide to the World’s Best Olive Oils.
531 Gold Awards and 216 Silver Awards went to producers who surmounted hurdles to create excellent products. Award-winning producers cited heatwaves, droughts, labor shortages, and inflation as hurdles in a particularly tough season.
Producers from Italy won 174 awards, followed by their counterparts in Spain (106), Croatia (105), Greece (90), the United States (80) and Turkey (74).
The Sicilian producer, which recently partnered with Starbucks for its olive oil-infused line of coffee beverages, earned six awards at the World Competition.
Outside of the world’s most prominent olive oil-producing countries, resourceful olive farmers from farther afield demonstrated that no single region has a monopoly on quality.
Kunisaki QLiVE Garden CEO Masahiro Ohno stated a typhoon damaged 900 trees before harvest."Harvesting and restoration work overlapped and were very difficult, but with the cooperation of the local community, we were able to complete the harvest safely."
Ohno's team wasn't the only ones to weather a storm. On the other side of the world, Georgia's largest olive oil producer made award-winning oil from hurricane-threatened olives.
"Hurricane Ian was making landfall just as we were preparing to begin harvest," said Fresh Press Farms agricultural and innovation director Ciriaco Chavez."We're 70 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, so the hurricane's path could affect our harvest."