Jerusalem Hosts 7th 'TerraOlivo' Competition

Jerusalem is per­haps one of the most idyl­lic places in the world to con­sider olive oil and its his­tory. In just one visit to the ancient city, a tourist can become cap­ti­vated by some of the most emblem­atic olive trees rooted in its soil.

Even the 12 vis­it­ing tasters at the TerraOlivo com­pe­ti­tion were in awe at the Garden of Olives in the Sanctuary Gethsemane. This is where Jesus was said to have prayed the night before he was cru­ci­fied. The word Gethsemane orig­i­nates from Hebrew or Aramaic for olive press.

The inter­na­tional tasters came from 7 coun­tries (Italy, Peru, Greece, The United States, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey) to par­tic­i­pate in the 7^th edi­tion of Terraolivo and quickly got to know and work as a team with the 25 Israeli tasters.

Antonio Lauro, head of the juries, spoke to Olive Oil Times on the impor­tance of judg­ing. ​“As panel mem­bers, we must never for­get two things: Firstly, mem­bers are noth­ing more than an instru­ment that mea­sures the char­ac­ter­is­tics of an olive oil. And sec­ondly, that behind each olive oil there is a pro­ducer that has worked very hard.

Some of those pro­duc­ers were present in the jury. Eran Galili, from Galili Olive Oil, said he is not only a pro­ducer: With Ehud Soriano (head of judges for the Israeli National Contest) he also orga­nizes a con­test in Israel called Family Olive. It focuses on smaller fam­ily pro­duc­ers that sim­ply do not have the vol­ume to com­pete in larger com­pe­ti­tions. This past March, 50 oils were pre­sented.

Ayala Noy Meir, also a pro­ducer demon­strated that olive oil is not just an ingre­di­ent; it is a medium to bring cul­tures together and con­nects us to our past and future. She is part of the Olive Oil Without Borders project that helps bring Palestinians and Israelis together. She shared a very mov­ing video on her project that was just recently pub­lished.

After get­ting to know one another, all of the tasters became very seri­ous as they slurped, dis­cussed and noted their marks. Around 2,800 blue tast­ing glasses were used to score the 627 sam­ples from 19 dif­fer­ent coun­tries.

By the late after­noon on June 8^th, fol­low­ing three long days of tast­ing and many more of hard work to orga­nize the event, the much-antic­i­pated results were in. Spain was the grand win­ner with more than 130 awards fol­lowed by Israel, Italy and Greece.

Many Israeli pro­duc­ers attended the awards cer­e­mony to see if this year their olive oil had made the mark. Yaron Tirosh, also a panel mem­ber, was among them. His last name Tirosh, mean­ing fresh grape juice, demon­strates that his fam­ily has a clear his­tory of farm­ing. He does not have a large pro­duc­tion but man­ages to cul­ti­vate Barnea, Picual and Picholine olives.

Tirosh was pre­sented 6 awards, one being Israel Boutique Grand Champion. When OOT asked him about his biggest chal­lenge this year, he responded that it had been a very good year with almost no issues. Unfortunately, he said next year would most likely be dif­fi­cult due to a hot sum­mer cou­pled by an off year for bien­nial pro­duc­tion.

Masik Kibbutz Magal was awarded 13 prizes. Maya Gutman said they are a small kib­butz that pro­duces 8 dif­fer­ent olive oils as well as almonds. They make 6 mono­va­ri­etals and 2 blends. When asked how she liked to use her olive oil, she said she uses it for every­thing, even in her hair when it gets dry. She rec­om­mended using the Leccino for bak­ing, it is sweet and makes her cakes even bet­ter.

Itay Tupperberg and his three broth­ers are 4^th-gen­er­a­tion olive oil pro­duc­ers. Both of his par­ents passed away when they were young but his father gave them sound advice before he left: He told his sons to plant olive trees. They did and now they are win­ning awards like Best Israeli Koroneiki and Best Israeli Souri. Itay hon­ors his par­ents with an image of his father on their bot­tles and of his mother on a skin cream that is avail­able at their farm store.

We asked Shmuel Levin, 83, an Israeli who has won many awards through­out the years for Meshek Levin, what wis­dom he had to offer. He said water is a big prob­lem and is too costly in Israel. He rec­om­mended that the Israeli gov­ern­ment begin to help the farm­ers because the cost of water was mak­ing it very dif­fi­cult for them to sub­sist.

It was clear speak­ing to many Israeli farm­ers that they were hav­ing prob­lems mak­ing ends meet, but they all agreed that open­ing their doors to both tourism and to local con­sumers is one way to have a more eco­nom­i­cally sound busi­ness, as well as trans­mit trans­parency.

• Olive Oil Times


• USAID YouTube


• TerraOlivo