Producers of the Best Greek Olive Oils React to Their NYIOOC Awards

Watching the broad­cast of the New York International Olive Oil Competition (NYIOOC) results live at 2 a.m. Greek time, Vitsentzos Kornaros heard that Chrisopigi PDO Sitia Kritis won a cov­eted Best in Class award. Too excited to sleep, he wanted to wake every­one he knew to share the news.

Their win­ning secret? ​“We believe in our prod­uct, and we work very hard to be so good. We care for our olive trees with love and knowl­edge that enriches them in every way. We par­tic­i­pate in and super­vise all lev­els” of pro­duc­tion in east­ern Crete. ​“This means that we know what our prod­uct needs so as to pro­vide it at the right time.” Kornaros hopes this award will make Chrisopigi, which means ​“foun­tain of gold,” ​“more rec­og­niz­able world­wide,” said Kornaros.
See Also:The Best Greek Extra Virgin Olive Oils for 2016
Giovanni Bianchi said he ​“knew that the qual­ity of Argali extra vir­gin olive oil [EVOO] had improved a lot,” and he was hop­ing for an NYIOOC award, but ​“to see Argali win Best in Class brought a unique and unex­pected emo­tion.” With his choices jus­ti­fied, he said, ​“I am deter­mined and moti­vated to con­tinue to improve the qual­ity of my oil,” while respect­ing the envi­ron­ment and his co-work­ers.

An Italian com­puter pro­gram­mer based in Rome, Bianchi was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, where his fam­ily lived for his first eleven years, cre­at­ing such ​“a strong link with Greece” that he decided to buy land with 250 hardy olive trees in Gargalianoi, west­ern Peloponnese, in 2004. ​“From that year, I began dream­ing and think­ing about olive oil. I stud­ied, took classes in Italy on oil tast­ing, and con­vinced the millers to make oil as I wanted. My dream would be to return to Greece and make this great pas­sion my job.” Already, he per­son­ally man­ages every har­vest, bot­tling, and prun­ing ses­sion.

Olive Mill Kyklopas and Kyklopas Olive Mill Organic both won Gold Awards. Niki Kelidou, pres­i­dent of Kyklopas (or Cyclops), says ​“each prize our com­pany wins gives added value and also shows us that we are on the right track.” Their olive vari­ety, Makris, ​“is our great asset, and our major weapon is to treat it as it deserves.” Their part of north­east­ern Greece, very close to Turkey, Bulgaria, and per­haps the cave of the Cyclops, expe­ri­enced almost no prob­lems with the olive fly or tree dis­eases this year, which helped them to pro­duce an excep­tional EVOO.

When Yanni’s Finest from Yanni’s Olive Grove won a Gold Award, while Yanni’s Limited PDO Chalkidiki won a Silver, Evi Prodromou said, ​“it was like we man­aged to climb Mount Everest, to the top of the world.” She added that ​“these NYIOOC awards will make a huge dif­fer­ence for our com­pany. Our EVOOs are now known on the whole planet as high-qual­ity EVOOs,” with both Yanni’s EVOOs and Chalkidiki vari­eties win­ning ​“such inter­na­tional recog­ni­tion” for the first time.

Yanni’s Olive Grove is the only com­pany involved in the pilot project of a unique research method called ​“Application of Intelligent Agriculture” which aims ​“to pro­duce Green Early Harvest Extra Virgin Olive Oils with the high­est pos­si­ble qual­ity.” All aspects of pro­duc­tion are under the care of the Krinos Olive Center and the American Farm School. They fol­low, Prodromou said, ​“the instruc­tions of the IOC by the book” in a ver­ti­cally inte­grated pro­duc­tion process for ​“fully con­trolled qual­ity assur­ance from the field to the fin­ished prod­uct using tra­di­tional prac­tices but with sci­en­tific con­trol.” The result is organolep­tic excel­lence and very high polyphe­nol con­tent (for extra health ben­e­fits).

Konstantinos Papadopoulos said he expects his Gold Award for Mythocia Omphacium Organic and Silver Award for Mythocia Omphacium to ​“help us give our brand the pres­tige we want.” He believes ​“the fact that our prod­ucts have won a num­ber of dis­tinc­tions in only two years is the result of peo­ple work­ing hard and with pas­sion and striv­ing for qual­ity. It is a great moti­va­tion to think that we con­tribute to spread­ing the excel­lent qual­ity of Greek olive oil all over the world. There is no secret to what we do. There is no place for com­pro­mise. We search for per­fec­tion in every sin­gle part of the process.” Working near ancient Olympia and inspired by their ​“love for olive oil, faith and pas­sion,” they engage in ​“con­tin­u­ous research and sci­en­tific mon­i­tor­ing,” har­vest­ing early for best results.

James Panagiotopoulos, PJ Kabos founder and owner, views his Gold Award for PJ Kabos Family Reserve and Silver Award for PJ Kabos as ​“another brick in the house of trust we are build­ing with and for our respected cus­tomers, an added ver­i­fi­ca­tion of yet another year of high-qual­ity con­sis­tency.” He attrib­utes his company’s suc­cess to their main­te­nance of ​“high stan­dards with no qual­ity com­pro­mise, spar­ing no expense on our part in order to achieve this. From car­ing for our trees to olive har­vest­ing, oil extrac­tion, stor­age and trans­porta­tion of the final prod­uct,” they come ​“as close to per­fec­tion as pos­si­ble.”

Efthimiadi Estate co-own­ers Iris Efthimiadou and her fiancé Sam Lord received a mid­dle of the night sur­prise, learn­ing about the Gold Award for Eliris Extraordinary Organic with ​“excite­ment and sheer joy,” as well as pride that ​“our small fam­ily com­pany is pro­duc­ing at the high­est level in the indus­try.”

In 2008, Efthimiadou and Lord gave up ​“suc­cess­ful careers in London” to return to north­east­ern Greece to ​“honor her father’s mem­ory by reju­ve­nat­ing and tend­ing the cher­ished fam­ily olive grove,” an unusual mix of Greek olive vari­eties, includ­ing Koroneiki, Kalamata, Tsounati, Manaki, Megaritiki and Halkidiki. Lord empha­sized that Eliris has a very low acid­ity (0.24 per­cent) and pos­si­bly ​“the low­est per­ox­ide value on the mar­ket (1.9 mmol O2/kg) due to healthy fruit and fas­tid­i­ous prod­uct han­dling pre- and post-extrac­tion,” mean­ing very lit­tle oxi­da­tion in the oil, so it stays fresh much longer than most EVOOs.

Ellie Tragakes of Hellenic Agricultural Enterprises says ​“we were immensely grat­i­fied that the unusual qual­i­ties of the Kolovi olive vari­ety, native to our home island of Lesvos, were rec­og­nized at the high­est level” when their Acaia EVOO won a Gold Award. ​“In fact, we cre­ated our Acaia brand in order to intro­duce con­sumers every­where to the island’s olive oil, which is prover­bially famous for its aro­mas and del­i­cate fla­vor.” They attribute their suc­cess to ​“our painstak­ing selec­tion accord­ing to the most strin­gent organolep­tic and chem­i­cal cri­te­ria” and expect their NYIOOC Gold to ​“help us achieve our goal to make our Acaia olive oil well known to con­sumers in North America.”

After Gaea Sitia won a Gold Award, CEO Aris Kefalogiannis com­mented that ​“it is always an honor for us to win awards because it vin­di­cates our efforts” and ​“gives us moti­va­tion and more strength as well as the respon­si­bil­ity to offer the best extra vir­gin olive oil to our cus­tomers.” Although ​“abnor­mally hot weather” in Gaea’s pro­duc­ing areas meant ​“this was one of the most chal­leng­ing crops for many years in terms of qual­ity,” Gaea found a way to excel, using ​“the best pos­si­ble prac­tices in order to pro­duce the best, authen­tic high-qual­ity Extra Virgin Olive Oil.”

Greece’s top win­ners at this year’s NYIOOC exem­plify the results of a trend Kefalogiannis has noticed in his coun­try: ​“More and more, espe­cially young pro­duc­ers try to be informed and edu­cated and pro­duce olive oil fol­low­ing best prac­tices. This will make a dif­fer­ence in the year to come.” It is no coin­ci­dence that the top Greek award win­ners all focus on high qual­ity, their aim for per­fec­tion, and their stren­u­ous efforts to pro­duce excel­lent EVOO.

Some of the win­ning Greek brands will be avail­able for sale by U.S. dis­trib­u­tors and retail­ers who stock them on the new Best Olive Oils Marketplace, set to launch in a few weeks.

• The World’s Best Olive Oils


• The Best Greek Olive Oils for 2016