Fruitful Harvest Yields Record Year for Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Part of our con­tin­u­ing spe­cial cov­er­age of the 2021 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

Producers from across the Balkan Peninsula enjoyed a record year at the 2021 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

While the most awards went to Croatian pro­duc­ers, entrants from Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina also earned a record-high num­ber of awards at the world’s most pres­ti­gious olive oil qual­ity com­pe­ti­tion.

Seven Slovenian pro­duc­ers earned Gold Awards at the com­pe­ti­tion after the small cen­tral European coun­try enjoyed a near-record har­vest.

According to International Olive Council data, Slovenia pro­duced 800 tons of olive oil in the 2020/21 crop year, the sec­ond-high­est total on record and about 42 per­cent above the rolling five-year aver­age. Slovenian olive oil pro­duc­tion is almost exclu­sively lim­ited to the Istrian penin­sula and Goriška.

Among the win­ners at this year’s edi­tion of the con­test was Villa Eva. Situated between the Julian Alps and the Adriatic Sea, the fam­ily estate earned its Gold Award for an organic medium Bianchera.

The roots of Villa Eva orig­i­nate with three women who ran the farm and accom­pa­ny­ing shop, which the fam­i­ly’s great grand­mother founded, since 1920. Since then, the com­pany has shifted its focus to organic olive oil pro­duc­tion and rents out vil­las on the prop­erty to tourists.

The groves are located in the pic­turesque land­scape of Goriška, which sits right on the hilly bor­der with Italy and boasts an ideal micro-cli­mate for olive cul­ti­va­tion.

The family’s fore­bear­ers estab­lished that the Istrska and Bjelica vari­eties thrived well in the area. The Bjelica vari­ety is dis­tin­guished by its rich aroma, whereas the Istrska olive is spicy and a lit­tle bit­ter. The family’s focus is on qual­ity as opposed to quan­tity, with an empha­sis on indige­nous olive vari­eties. The olive groves are dom­i­nated by Drobnica, Črnica and Istrska Bjelica trees.

“We feel immensely happy and proud to be noticed at such an impor­tant com­pe­ti­tion,” Timon Brataševec, Villa Eva’s co-owner, told Olive Oil Times. ​“For our entire fam­ily and employ­ees, this is a great recog­ni­tion and proof that we are work­ing in the right direc­tion. Winning the NYIOOC gives us new strength and energy for the future.”

“We are con­vinced that this recog­ni­tion will open new sales oppor­tu­ni­ties for us in the world as well,” he added. ​“We have been apply­ing for com­pe­ti­tions for many years and now we are achiev­ing excep­tion­ally good results.”

Villa Eva had a cat­a­strophic har­vest in 2019 due to inclement weather, which inhib­ited flow­er­ing and ripen­ing, and resulted in a low yield. Luckily, nature offered excel­lent results last year, even though there was wide­spread fear of the olive fruit fly.

It may be a lit­tle early to pre­dict this year’s har­vest as the olives are in bloom until mid-June, but Brataševec is hop­ing for another good year.

“After flow­er­ing, it will be shown a lit­tle more clearly what the har­vest will be like, if the weather con­di­tions con­tinue to be favor­able and not affected by the olive fly, which is our nat­ural enemy,” Brataševec said.

Located not far from the groves of Villa Eva, also in Goriška, the pro­duc­ers behind the Kmetija Drnovšček Estate also cel­e­brated a hard-earned win at the NYIOOC.

The com­pany took home a Gold Award for its robust organic Bjelica after pro­duc­ing 1,800 liters of organic extra vir­gin olive oil in 2020.

“I feel grate­ful. This award means we are pro­duc­ing olive oil the right way,” owner Matej Drnovšček told Olive Oil Times. ​“It’s repay­ment for all our hard work.”

Drnovšček started pro­duc­ing olive oil back in 2000, with a spe­cific focus on the auc­tocto­nous Črnica and Drobnica vari­eties, though he has planted four oth­ers as well. Like many other pro­duc­ers in the region, he cited ward­ing off the olive fruit fly as the biggest chal­lenge in what was oth­er­wise a very fruit­ful har­vest.

“Our main chal­lenge was man­ag­ing the fruit fly by doing proper tree prun­ing, mon­i­tor­ing and pro­tect­ing the olives organ­i­cally,” Drnovšček said.

Situated about 60 kilo­me­ters south of Goriška, in the upper cor­ner of the Istrian penin­sula, the pro­duc­ers behind Aegida cel­e­brated their first-ever win at the World Competition.

“This award means a lot to us, we are very glad,” co-owner Andrej Kaluza told Olive Oil Times. ​“Producing high-qual­ity oil is a chal­lenge, but we love our trees and this helps a lot.”

Kaluza and his wife founded the olive grove in 2013, restor­ing a grove that had been aban­doned for more than 50 years, and have gone on to cul­ti­vate 500 trees of the Istrska Bjelica, Leccino and Leccio del Corno vari­eties. The pro­duc­ers earned their Gold Award for a mono­va­ri­etal Leccio del Corno.

Not far from the groves of Aegida, the pro­duc­ers behind Morgan Cuvee cel­e­brated win­ning their fifth Gold Award at the NYIOOC.

“We feel very excited and happy, and most of all proud of our olive oil and our fam­ily for doing great work,” co-own­ers Franc and Jenny Morgan told Olive Oil Times. ​“It will def­i­nitely have a pos­i­tive impact on our brand and also on Slovenian olive oil as Slovenia is known for good olive oil world­wide.”

Along with hard work, the Morgans also attrib­uted their suc­cess to the geog­ra­phy of Slovenia’s Istrian penin­sula.

“Probably the main rea­son [our oils stand­out] is because of our geo­graph­i­cal posi­tion, which influ­ences the oil taste since our trees are posi­tioned quite high above sea level (230 meters) and on the sunny side of local hills,” they said. ​“The taste is unique in the sense of bit­ter­ness, fresh­ness and spici­ness.”

Along with many other Slovenian pro­duc­ers, the Morgans enjoyed a boun­ti­ful har­vest, pro­duc­ing roughly 3,000 liters of olive oil, a 15-per­cent increase com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year.

“Like every pro­ducer, we also depend on the weather,” they said. ​“Last year, the weather was quite sta­ble, and we man­aged to obtain the best from our trees.”

“Also, the olive fly was not so aggres­sive and con­se­quently, the olives matured in their nor­mal way, which led us to excel­lent olive oil qual­ity,” the pair added.

Situated just east of Dalmatia, in the rolling hills of Herzegovina, two pro­duc­ers from Bosnia and Herzegovina also cel­e­brated their suc­cess at the 2021 NYIOOC.

The com­bined Gold and Silver Awards won by the two pro­duc­ers was the high­est total yet from the land­locked repub­lic.

For the fourth con­sec­u­tive year, the Škegro Family Winery earned a Gold Award for its Krš brand, a medium blend of hand­picked Oblica, Pendolino, Casaliva, Lastovka, Levantinka, Leccino and Cipressino olives.

The fam­ily, which is already renowned for its wines, has 300 olive oil trees dot­ting the estate in Ljubuški, just east of the Croatian bor­der.

During the har­vest sea­son, the entire fam­ily takes part in the olive oil pro­duc­tion process from start to fin­ish. Barisa Škegro said that cul­ti­va­tion is chal­leng­ing as the olive groves are located on hills, but added the family’s hard­work is rewarded with qual­ity olive oil.

The Škegro fam­ily pro­duced 200 liters of olive oil in the last har­vest, over­com­ing the chal­lenges cre­ated by the uncer­tainty of the Covid-19 pan­demic. Škegro added that he is opti­mistic for this year’s har­vest as the weather so far has been good.

“We are proud and full of hap­pi­ness because our hard work has been rec­og­nized… despite the Covid-19 pan­demic, which put an end to nor­mal pro­duc­tion,” he said.