Producers in Small Croatian Village Celebrate Success While Calling for More Support

Situated on the scenic Dalmatian coast­line, the small munic­i­pal­ity of Pakoštane is home to one of the high­est con­cen­tra­tions of award-win­ning pro­duc­ers in Croatia.

Benefiting from the area’s unique geog­ra­phy and cli­mate, pro­duc­ers enjoyed unprece­dented suc­cess at the 2023 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition and came together recently to cel­e­brate.

Among the newly-anointed NYIOOC win­ners at the fes­tiv­ity were Ante Vulin, Vinko Lalin and Tomislav Čudina, each of whom won Gold Awards for their extra vir­gin olive oil at the world’s largest olive oil qual­ity com­pe­ti­tion in New York.

“We are glad that we con­tributed to the suc­cess of our coun­try’s olive grow­ers,” said Vulin, the owner of epony­mous OPG Vulin, which earned a Gold Award for its Antino brand, a medium-inten­sity Oblica.

Meanwhile, Lalin of OPG Lalin and his daugh­ter Danijela earned a Gold Award for their Dalma Premium brand, a medium blend.

The Lalin fam­ily said they were delighted with the award, the brand’s third gold medal this year after it was also awarded at two local competitions.“This is the suc­cess of our whole fam­ily,” Danijela Lalin said.

Coincidentally, Vulin and Vinko Lalin are for­mer busi­ness part­ners who cofounded a tourism com­pany in 2000. While both men started grow­ing olives inde­pen­dently in the late 1980s, they renewed their efforts to pro­duce high-qual­ity olive oil in recent years.

Today, Vulin has 980 olive trees, of which 500 are fully mature. In the extremely demand­ing 2022/23 crop year, he pro­duced 3,000 liters of extra vir­gin olive oil using tra­di­tional meth­ods.

“The biggest chal­lenges were over­com­ing the drought, pre­serv­ing healthy fruits and pro­cess­ing them in time,” he said.

Despite the extreme drought, Lalin also pro­duced 3,000 liters of extra vir­gin olive oil with 300 trees.

The third and youngest mem­ber, Pakoštan lau­re­ate and OPG Celini owner Tomislav Čudina, com­peted for the first time in New York and won a Gold Award.

“The first awards are remem­bered. This is the wind at my back,” said Čudina, who has been grow­ing olives since he inher­ited the land from his grand­fa­ther in 2012 and planted 61 olive trees.

Soon after, Čudina bought more land and planted 240 olive trees, includ­ing Oblica, Levantinka, Plavica, Pendolino, Leccino and Frantoio. ​“In the future, I plan to plant another 500 olive trees,” he said.

The NYIOOC judges said Čudina’s Olea Viola brand, a medium blend, fea­tures pro­nounced fruiti­ness, medium spici­ness and mild bit­ter­ness.

Pakoštane’s win­ning pro­duc­ers decided to cel­e­brate their suc­cess with the local com­mu­nity, orga­niz­ing an event at the local Karaba Winery.

Among the guests were Milivoj Kurtov, Pakoštane’s mayor; Ivica Vlatković, pres­i­dent Association of Olive Growers of Zadar County; Benito Pucar, pres­i­dent of Olive Days, a local olive oil com­pe­ti­tion; Danijela Vulin, Pakošatane’s tourist board direc­tor; and about 30 other well-known olive grow­ers from the region.

In his wel­com­ing speech, Vulin praised Croatian pro­duc­ers, who earned 105 awards from 128 entries, the third-high­est total of awards for any coun­try.

“We nar­rowly missed sec­ond place at the very end of the com­pe­ti­tion,” he added. Producers from Italy won 174 awards from 224 entries, while Spanish pro­duc­ers earned 106 hon­ors from 135 entries.

“Officially, with 105 awards won, we are the third in the world, but in terms of the per­cent­age of suc­cess with regard to the num­ber of sam­ples, we are the first,” Vlatković said.

However, he lamented that the suc­cess of local olive oil pro­duc­ers in Dalmatia is ​“not rec­og­nized by tourist boards, county author­i­ties or rel­e­vant agri­cul­tural min­istry depart­ments” as it has been in Istria.

“It’s time for the tourists who visit us to finally find out that our olive oil is the best prod­uct they can take home with them,” Vulin said.

Pakoštane receives about 1 mil­lion overnight stays annu­ally, with another 12 mil­lion in nearby Zadar.

Vulin said if every tourist bought one liter of extra vir­gin olive oil, pro­duc­ers would sell 900,000 liters.

Producers at the event added that sup­port for olive groves is also miss­ing from the local gov­ern­ments, except for Pakoštane.

Vulin cited the mayor’s six-year-old effort to edu­cate local olive grow­ers about eval­u­at­ing olive oil qual­ity and milling best prac­tices as why they con­sider Pakoštane the excep­tion.

“Respecting tra­di­tion, we encour­age new knowl­edge,” said Kurtov, the mayor. ​“The goal is to edu­cate olive grow­ers to restore old trees and con­tinue to plant new olive groves and improve qual­ity year after year.”

After more than a half-decade, the results are show­ing. There are more than 150,000 olive trees in Pakoštane munic­i­pal­ity. Of the 1,700 fam­i­lies in the area, almost all have olive trees.

“I am espe­cially happy that more and more young peo­ple are choos­ing to grow olives,” Kurtov said.

Along with Vulin, Lalin and Čudina, five or six other grow­ers in Pakoštane said they want to enter the 2024 NYIOOC.