Chile's First Olive Oil Guide Launched in Santiago

The first Chilean guide­book high­light­ing the country’s best extra vir­gin and fla­vored olive oils went on sale ear­lier this week.

Guía Oliva 2019 fea­tures local olive oils that received a min­i­mum score of 65 points out of 100 by the authors.

“For us, the main thing was to bring good olive oils to the con­sumers,” co-author Carola Dümmer Medina told Olive Oil Times.

“The feed­back we got from the pro­duc­ers fea­tured in the guide this year has also been amaz­ing,” she added. ​“They really appre­ci­ate that we are mak­ing this tool for con­sumers to under­stand olive oil and to help them choose good brands.”

Dümmer Medina and fel­low author Alicia Moya Valenzuela — both judges at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition — hosted a launch party this week in Santiago to coin­cide with the pub­li­ca­tion of the book.

“It was a big event with a lot of olive oil,” Dümmer Medina said. ​“We invited all of the pro­duc­ers who took part in the guide. It was maybe 80 to 100 peo­ple who were from the indus­try, includ­ing pro­duc­ers and retail­ers.”

The duo also invited mem­bers of the pub­lic to reg­is­ter on their web­site and decided to host the event at a shop­ping mall in Chile’s cap­i­tal. This allowed curi­ous passersby to enter and sam­ple some local oils, of which they may pre­vi­ously not have been aware. Overall, 180 peo­ple attended the launch event, Dümmer Medina said.

Dümmer Medina and Moya Valenzuela say they are on a mis­sion to pro­mote local olive oils in Chile. The diverse South American coun­try is the sec­ond-largest pro­ducer of olive oil in the Americas after Argentina, but con­sump­tion remains very low.

The duo believe that olive oil edu­ca­tion is key in pro­mot­ing con­sump­tion and hope events such as their book launch, as well as future events that are planned in dif­fer­ent parts of Chile, will raise their com­pa­tri­ots’ aware­ness of the high-qual­ity olive oil being pro­duced through­out the coun­try.

“We are very happy with the imme­di­ate effects of the event,” Dümmer Medina said. ​“People seem to be very inter­ested in the guide.”

She added that orders are already com­ing in from Santiago as well as the rest of the coun­try. Soon the book will go on sale in olive oil retail loca­tions and spe­cialty food stores as well. For now, it can be pur­chased directly from their web­site.

However, the Dümmer Medina and Moya Valenzuela are not rest­ing on their lau­rels yet.

In total, 69 pro­duc­ers sub­mit­ted olive oils to be judged and included in the book this year. Combining their events with pub­lic­ity in local media, the two experts hope next year’s edi­tion will include even more oils, both locally pro­duced and imported ones.

“We really want to make this project a long-time thing,” Dümmer Medina said. ​“We’ve already started work­ing on next year’s edi­tion.”