Life After Winning Gold in New York

Every year at the New York International Olive Oil Competition (NYIOOC), we wit­ness the win­ners’ hard-won ela­tion. Then, after hugs and cel­e­bra­tory cock­tails, the pro­duc­ers return to dis­parate cor­ners of the globe and get back to the demand­ing task of craft­ing qual­ity olive oil. If we are lucky, we stock their bot­tles in our kitchens, but we do not see their smil­ing (and nerve-wracked) faces for another year.

This time, Olive Oil Times caught up with Sheila Fitzgerald, founder and part­ner of Azeite Esplendido, which won a gold for its estate-grown Esplendido Douro at the 2016 NYIOOC in April. We wanted to see how the award has impacted her oil and her busi­ness.

This year, the com­pe­ti­tion was steeper than ever. 827 olive oil pro­duc­ers from 26 coun­tries sub­mit­ted entries — the largest inter­na­tional col­lec­tion of olive oils ever assem­bled.

Fitzgerald’s brand was only two months old at the time it scored its gold. ​“The first day the prod­uct arrived I pack­aged up the sam­ples and shipped them to New York,” she said. Her team in Portugal watched the live broad­cast of the press con­fer­ence.

Azeite Esplendido hails from Tras-os-Montes, in one of Portugal’s six Protected Designation of Origin zones, which sits high in the hills over­look­ing the Douro val­ley. The region’s soil and micro­cli­mate are ideal for grow­ing olives, and the grower tends to each olive with­out pes­ti­cides, care­fully select­ing and pick­ing the per­fectly ripe fruits by hand.

And yet, before the NYIOOC, Fitzgerald was find­ing it incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to secure dis­tri­b­u­tion in the US. ​“The mar­ket is so sat­u­rated,” she said. Fitzgerald was turned down by sev­eral dis­trib­u­tors. ​“For a small brand like myself, you have to wait and wait and wait.”

But her NYIOOC vic­tory changed the game imme­di­ately. The spe­cialty foods importer Milepost 65 now dis­trib­utes her prod­uct. With her award, ​“Azeite Esplendido became a shoe-in,” Fitzgerald said. ​“There is no way I would have got­ten the deal with­out the NYIOOC gold award.” Since the results came in, ​“my phone has been blow­ing up with inquiries and web sales have gone through the roof,” she said.

And with good rea­son. The stun­ning golden-green oil is a care­ful blend of four vari­etals, fra­grant with grassy notes and a pep­pery, spicy fin­ish. Esplendido Douro is pressed within 12 hours after har­vest­ing, and there is zero waste — the olive skins are used to make presto logs, and the fields are not irri­gated.

Fitzgerald’s oil has been a labor of love. Fitzgerald met her now busi­ness part­ner, Portuguese native Jorge Caeiro, while hik­ing a coastal trail in Northern Portugal four years ago. Along the trail, Fitzgerald and Caeiro were invited by a local olive pro­ducer, Henrique Cardoso, for lunch, where Fitzgerald first tasted this exquis­ite olive oil. A light­bulb went off: Americans would love this oil.

The first ship­ment of Azeite Esplendido arrived in Seattle on February 6, 2016. Caeiro remains in Portugal, man­ag­ing the pro­duc­tion and local staff and main­tain­ing their obses­sion with qual­ity. Fitzgerald over­sees busi­ness devel­op­ment at oper­a­tional head­quar­ters in Seattle. Fitzgerald likes ​“being small, an under­dog, with really good qual­ity olive oil, because I know that we can main­tain that qual­ity.”

“I’m thrilled,” Fitzgerald said. ​“Once you have a gold award from New York, it solid­i­fies your prod­uct. It’s val­i­da­tion. There is a 100% link between win­ning at the NYIOOC and grow­ing my brand.”

Fitzgerald ships Esplendido Douro from her Seattle ware­house and has already listed her prod­ucts on the Best Olive Oils Marketplace which will launch in a few weeks, to reach the ever-grow­ing mar­ket for the world’s top olive oils.

After the com­pe­ti­tion, Fitzgerald joined some NYIOOC judges and pro­duc­ers for a drink at the Gramercy Park Hotel, where she was stay­ing. She started chat­ting with a man who asked about her olive oil.

“My boss loves olive oil,” he remarked.

“Who’s your boss?” Fitzgerald asked.

“Do you hap­pen to know Jewel?”

It turns out the man was bassist Byron House, whose band JD & The Straight Shot was tour­ing with the singer Jewel.

House wanted to pur­chase six bot­tles for Jewel and her crew, but Fitzgerald insisted on gift­ing them the oils.

Big-deal chefs in Seattle had told Fitzgerald she was sit­ting on a pile of gold. ​“But you can’t just have a great prod­uct, you have to have a plan. The NYIOOC was a huge part of that plan. So far, it’s work­ing.”

“We’re going to donate some sales back to the farm­ing com­mu­nity in Portugal,” Fitzgerald said. ​“This is about doing some­thing that peo­ple are going to ben­e­fit from.”

• The World’s Best Olive Oils for 2016