Greek Producers Enjoy Another Triumphant Showing in World Competition

Part of our con­tin­u­ing spe­cial cov­er­age of the 2022 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

Entrants from Greece rejoiced of their sec­ond-best per­for­mance within the 2022 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, win­ning an impres­sive 79 awards (45 Gold and 34 Silver) from 142 entries.

In the pre­vi­ous edi­tion of the com­pe­ti­tion, Greeks earned a record-high haul of 99 awards.

Our quest for a dis­tinc­tive olive oil made us recon­sider and rede­nice each­factor we knew about olive develop­ing and olive oil professional­duc­tion.– Maria Sgourou, co-owner, Skoutari

Olive oil professional­duc­ers, bot­tlers and exporters from throughout the coun­attempt exceeded expec­ta­tions in a har­vest sea­son bur­dened with climate extremes, excessive professional­duc­tion prices and decrease than ordinary yields in sev­eral olive oil-pro­duc­ing ter­ri­to­ries.

The ini­tial professional­jec­tions of a lowered yield for the entire coun­attempt had been ver­i­fied with a complete of 225,000 tons of olive oil professional­duced within the 2021/22 crop 12 months, down by 50,000 tons from the 2020/21 professional­duc­tion complete.

See Also:The Best Olive Oils from Greece

Even extra, Greece was among the many Mediterranean coun­tries most severely hit by wild­fires in August, suf­fer­ing sub­stan­tial losses in for­est and agri­cul­tural cap­i­tal.

Along with the most well liked sum­mer in a long time which took its toll on the 2020/21 olive oil crop, the wild­fires added one other layer of exhausting­ship for a sub­stan­tial yield to Greek professional­duc­ers.

Most impacted had been these sit­u­ated in west­ern Peloponnese close to Ancient Olympia and in north­ern Evia, the place thou­sands of olive timber had been dam­aged or turned to ashes by the blazes.

Greek professional­duc­ers mea­sured as much as the require­ments win­ning mul­ti­ple awards at NYIOOC, reaf­agency­ing the stature of the nation’s olive oil sec­tor, which accounts for nearly 10 per­cent of the whole worth of the nationwide agri­cul­tural professional­duc­tion com­pared to 1 per­cent in different European olive oil-pro­duc­ing coun­tries, as of 2018.

“It has been a dif­fi­cult har­vest­ing sea­son,” Konstantinos Chantzopoulos, the dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ager at Olix Oil, instructed Olive Oil Times.

Photo: Olix Oil

“The adverse weather, the pro­longed drought and the wild­fires have all left their mark on the olive oil pro­duc­tion in Greece, and the unpro­pi­tious cir­cum­stances for the sec­tor have been inten­si­fied by the pan­demic after­math and the ongo­ing war [in Ukraine],” he added.

However, a 100-per­cent suc­cess charge and three Gold Awards gave Olix Oil an excel­lent rea­son to cel­e­brate a nice present­ing at NYIOOC this 12 months.

“We are grate­ful and extremely sat­is­fied with the results because each bot­tle of ​‘liq­uid gold’ we pro­duce requires a lot of effort and pas­sion for the gen­er­ous Greek land,” Chantzopoulos stated. ​“It is the per­fect reward for our hard work and a moti­va­tion to keep pro­duc­ing prod­ucts of pre­mium qual­ity, espe­cially in the hard times we live in.”

The professional­ducer from Laconia was awarded for its Nate Premium, Koroneiki Premium and Ladelia Premium mono­va­ri­etal additional vir­gin olive oils, all produced from a medium Koroneiki.

Olix Oil has advanced into an inter­na­tional cor­po­ra­tion at all times striv­ing to satisfy the wants of con­sumers world­vast, aspir­ing to ​“make them know the Greek fla­vors… and be able to enjoy the ben­e­fits of the best diet in the world; the Mediterranean diet.”

Cretan professional­duc­ers, from one aspect of the island to the opposite, loved one other lus­trous seem­ance on the 2022 NYIOOC, account­ing for 15 awards from the nation’s 79 awards.

Skoutari from Lasithi in east­ern Crete is begin­ing to kind a obscure, in the intervening time, win­ning streak within the com­pe­ti­tion, earn­ing a Gold Award for its identify­sake mono­va­ri­etal from Koroneiki for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive 12 months.

Photo: Skoutari

“We are extremely happy that our extra vir­gin olive oil was awarded for the sec­ond time in a row in the most pres­ti­gious and demand­ing com­pe­ti­tion in the world,” co-owner Maria Sgourou instructed Olive Oil Times.

The com­pany has been within the olive oil busi­ness since 2000 after tak­ing over the fam­ily olive groves positioned between the vil­lages of Kritsas and Kavousi. Its ini­tial purpose was to professional­duce an olive oil distinctive for its fla­vor and wholesome attrib­utes.

“Our quest for a dis­tinc­tive olive oil made us recon­sider and rede­fine every­thing we knew about olive grow­ing and olive oil pro­duc­tion,” Sgourou stated. ​“Since 2020, when our olive oil was bot­tled for the first time, every award we receive is a ver­i­fi­ca­tion of our choices, and it pro­pels us for­ward.”

Skoutari is a high-phe­no­lic additional vir­gin olive oil bear­ing a well being declare below the require­ments of the E.U. reg­u­la­tion 432/2012.

Another Gold Award went to Androulakis Eftychios Olive Oil Bottling from the west­ern Cretan province of Chania, an space that has con­stantly been professional­duc­ing NYIOOC win­ners through the years.

Photo: Androulakis Eftychios Olive Oil Bottling

The professional­ducer was awarded for its Pamako Mountain Organic Blend, produced from the Koroneiki and Tsounati vari­eties.

An estab­lished NYIOOC com­peti­tor already in its sixth 12 months within the com­pe­ti­tion, the com­pany has obtained mul­ti­ple awards for its mono­va­ri­etal and blended additional vir­gin olive oils.

“We are excited to win again at NYIOOC, and it is always a joy to receive a Gold Award in such a pres­ti­gious com­pe­ti­tion,” proprietor Eftychios Androulakis stated. ​“We are always improv­ing, and we are cur­rently ahead of an expan­sion of our facil­i­ties and human cap­i­tal while we remain focused on qual­ity.”

Androulakis additionally antic­i­pated a boun­ti­ful har­vest within the area of Chania within the subsequent crop 12 months. He stated that the move­er­ing of the olive timber con­tin­ues with­out sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems to this point, and the wet win­ter of 2021/22 has stuffed the world’s nat­ural sub­ter­ranean reser­voirs, cre­at­ing the correct below­lay for the timber to thrive.

Apart from return­ing com­peti­tors, first-time entrants from Greece had been additionally topped on the world’s largest olive oil qual­ity con­take a look at.

The Peloponnesian Ootopia was suc­cess­ful in its first-ever par­tic­i­pa­tion within the com­pe­ti­tion receiv­ing awards for all three of its entries.

Photo: Ootopia

The com­pany gained two Gold Awards for its identify­sake Manaki mono­va­ri­etal and mix from Manaki and Koroneiki and a Silver Award for the natural Single Estate Iliokastro from Koroneiki.

“[We are] so, so proud,” stated John Anairousis, the gross sales man­ager of Ootopia, after see­ing the corporate’s imaginative and prescient to cre­ate a world-class property capable of professional­duce excep­tional olive oils get­ting on observe.

“It was our first time in the pres­ti­gious NYIOOC com­pe­ti­tion, and we won two Gold and one Silver Award,” Anairousis added. ​“Ootopia leads the sta­tis­tics since it is one of the few Greek brands to win three awards with equal entries.”

Achieving excel­lence was no straightforward process for Ootopia this sea­son, regulate­ing to the chal­lenges the erratic climate pre­sented dur­ing har­vest.

“The weather was hot and windy in our region,” Anairousis stated. ​“We decided to har­vest in two dif­fer­ent time­frames in the day, early in the morn­ing and late in the after­noon, to avoid high tem­per­a­tures. This tac­tic offered us the cru­cial advan­tage of deliv­er­ing our hand­picked olives quickly and at the right tem­per­a­ture to the mill.”

Ootopia has constructed its pri­vately-owned olive oil mill near its olive groves of three,500 olive timber in Ermioni in north­east Peloponnese, reduc­ing the time between har­vest­ing and professional­cess­ing of the olives for opti­mum outcomes.

Olive timber of Italian and Spanish vari­eties additionally spring up within the firm’s groves amongst timber of the Koroneiki vari­ety, sup­port­ing the corporate’s motto of being ​‘extra vir­gin olive oil per­fec­tion­ists’ than ​‘extra vir­gin olive oil nation­al­ists.’

“The results [at the NYIOOC] jus­ti­fied our strat­egy,” Anairousis con­cluded, burst­ing with excite­ment. ​“We are so proud of our prod­uct, but more so of our peo­ple, our ded­i­ca­tion, our vision.”

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