Israeli Producers Celebrate Record Year at World Competition

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

Israeli olive oil pro­duc­ers enjoyed a record year at the 2021 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, earn­ing its first awards at the com­pe­ti­tion since 2015.

Three pro­duc­ers com­bined to win one Gold Award and two Silver Awards at this year’s edi­tion of the world’s most pres­ti­gious olive oil qual­ity com­pe­ti­tion.

The record year at the NYIOOC came despite olive oil pro­duc­tion hit­ting its low­est point since the 2009/10 crop year.

According to International Olive Council data, Israel pro­duced just 11,000 tons of olive oil in the 2020/21 crop year, roughly one-third less than the rolling five-year aver­age.

The pro­duc­tion decrease largely has been attrib­uted to pro­duc­ers enter­ing an off-year in the olive trees’ nat­ural alter­nate bear­ing cycle and com­pli­ca­tions result­ing from the Covid-19 pan­demic.

Among Israel’s win­ning pro­duc­ers was Tamir Farm, which earned a Gold Award for its Ptora Midnight Coratina mono­va­ri­etal.

“The olive oil indus­try holds great tra­di­tion in Israel, all through the times of the Bible,” Ido Tamir, the company’s owner, told Olive Oil Times. ​“In this tra­di­tional indus­try, we strive to be inno­v­a­tive.”

Tamir attrib­uted his company’s suc­cess at the com­pe­ti­tion to its com­plete con­trol of the pro­duc­tion process.

“We are sit­u­ated in the south­ern part of Israel, but we work accord­ing to European stan­dards,” he said. ​“Being both grow­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers gives us com­plete con­trol of the process and allows us to imple­ment our high stan­dards through­out the whole pro­ce­dure.”

Along with his Coratina, Tamir also pro­duces olive oils from the endemic Nabali cul­ti­var, for which he pre­vi­ously earned a Gold Award at the 2015 NYIOOC.

“Throughout the years, we have come up with sev­eral unique blends of olive oil,” Tamir said. ​“The first one is our Nabali, a local ancient vari­ety, which is dif­fi­cult to grow and has a very low capac­ity of pro­duc­ing oil, mak­ing it rare and cov­eted.”

While Coratina olives are a more com­mon vari­ety, Tamir tries to dif­fer­en­ti­ate the prod­uct by har­vest­ing the olives only at night, when the cool tem­per­a­tures help pre­serve their organolep­tic and chem­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics.

“Our Midnight Ultra-Premium olive oil is pro­duced with extreme care at night to avoid expo­sure to light and warm tem­per­a­tures,” he said. ​“The olives are metic­u­lously selected at an early stage of the sea­son, har­vested at sun­set, and imme­di­ately trans­ferred to the oil press.”

“Here, the extrac­tion process is done in com­plete dark­ness and at very low tem­per­a­tures, pro­duc­ing a gen­tle extrac­tion of the high­est qual­ity,” he added. ​“This unique process results in an excep­tion­ally bright green col­ored olive oil with a fresh, fruity and robust taste.”

Tamir spent more than two years per­fect­ing his mid­night blend, includ­ing six months to develop an ideal design for the bot­tle. The pro­ducer wanted to use the cus­tomers’ first impres­sion of the oil to empha­size how it is pro­duced.

In 2020, Tamir Farm pro­duced 60 tons of olive oil, of which three tons were Ptora Midnight Coratina.

“2020 will always be remem­bered as the year of Covid-19,” Tamir said. ​“Producing extra vir­gin olive oil under such uncer­tain­ties was not an easy task. When Covid-19 ini­tially broke out in Israel in March 2020, the uncer­tainty left us breath­less for a while.”

“Restaurants were shut­ting down; cor­po­rate cus­tomers were can­cel­ing their orders,” he added. ​“Fortunately, we man­aged to respond pretty quickly, trans­fer­ring our focus to the pri­vate sec­tor that was at home, and showed increased inter­est in cook­ing and fine din­ing at home.”

Tamir hopes to have a bet­ter year in 2021 but said the har­vest sea­son was already off to a tough start due to Israel’s erratic cli­mate.

“Unfortunately, low pre­cip­i­ta­tion this win­ter along with sev­eral heat waves in the last few weeks was bound to result in a rel­a­tively low crop,” Tamir said. ​“We might not pro­duce a lot of olive oil in the upcom­ing year, but we will make sure to main­tain our high stan­dard and present the mar­ket with the best pos­si­ble extra vir­gin olive oil.”

For Tamir, part of the attrac­tion of enter­ing the NYIOOC was to estab­lish his brand as a high-qual­ity pro­ducer, and win­ning Gold has helped Tamir Farm achieve just that.

“Winning awards at the NYIOOC gives us the feel­ing that we have suc­ceeded in build­ing a strong foun­da­tion for our brand,” he said. ​“Standing in line with the world’s best olive oil pro­duc­ers will pave the way for us in the inter­na­tional mar­kets and will expose us to a new audi­ence.”

On the other side of Israel, the women-led orga­ni­za­tion, Sindyanna of Galilee, was also rec­og­nized at the 2021 NYIOOC, win­ning a Silver Award for its Extra Hopeful Olive Oil blend.

Hadas Lahav, Sindyanna of Galilee’s CEO, said that the women of Sindyanna are very proud to receive this inter­na­tional recog­ni­tion, both encour­aged by the award itself and for prov­ing that Arab and Jewish women can make life much bet­ter for them­selves when work­ing together.

“Our brand Extra Hopeful Olive Oil came just in time to show that hope for peace and sol­i­dar­ity can come from the Middle East,” Lahav said. ​“The fact that in Sindyanna, Arab and Jewish women work together is the ulti­mate response to the recent vio­lence, war and the destruc­tion of Gaza that we have just expe­ri­enced lately.”

Along with its unique mis­sion, Lahav added that Sindyanna’s olive oils stand out because they are the only Fair Trade Certified prod­ucts in Israel.

“We are plant­ing and run­ning Fair Trade organic and envi­ron­ment-friendly olive groves,” she said. ​“We invest in and develop mod­ern and sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture meth­ods for the devel­op­ment of the Arab rural com­mu­nity in Israel.”

“All our rev­enues are rein­vested in cre­at­ing jobs for Arab women, devel­op­ing sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture and pro­mot­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties for Arab and Jewish women,” she added.

Like the other Israeli pro­duc­ers, 2020 was a chal­leng­ing year for Sindyanna due to the Covid-19 pan­demic. Its groves yielded six tons of olive oil, which was half of its yield in 2019.

“Like every­one else in Israel, the women of Sindyanna worked accord­ing to guide­lines of the Ministry of Health,” Lahav said. ​“Thanks to a spe­cial gov­ern­ment allowance for agri­cul­ture and food pro­duc­ers, some of our work con­tin­ued dur­ing 2020.”

“Unfortunately, we had to let some work­ers go at the start of the pan­demic and were unable to re-hire all of them before the resump­tion of work at full pace,” she added.

Despite the set­back, Lahav said pro­duc­tion was not as low as it could have been, and the pan­demic proved that the com­pany was cri­sis-resilient. However, she is hop­ing for a bet­ter har­vest in 2021.

“We shall be able to con­tinue to improve our olive oil qual­ity and con­tribute towards the devel­op­ment of high-qual­ity olive oil pro­duc­tion in Galilee,” she said.

Meanwhile, in cen­tral Israel, the pro­duc­ers behind BVS Premium Jerusalem Olive Oil cel­e­brated win­ning their first-ever Silver Award for its Heart Notes blend.

Despite the pres­ence of some well-known brands of olive oil in Israel, Ashkenazi Hani, the company’s CEO, said her olive oil stands out from the com­pe­ti­tion.

“While we are sure that the other win­ners are excel­lent, we feel that our oil is spe­cial as it is pro­duced with much care and patience, involv­ing numer­ous tri­als and test­ing of our fin­ished olive oil,” Hani told Olive Oil Times.

Part of what made this olive oil an award win­ner at the 2021 NYIOOC was the ter­roir on which the olives are grown and the fact that they are har­vested early.

“Our pre­ferred method is to pick the olives com­par­a­tively early at the very start of the sea­son to ensure a green and aro­matic blend of olive oil,” Hani said.

BVS Premium Jerusalem Olive Oil pro­duced 8,000 liters of extra vir­gin olive oil in 2020, a lit­tle less than the pre­vi­ous year, which Hani attrib­uted to the pan­demic.

“We feared that the olive oil pro­duced dur­ing the 2020 har­vest would remain unsold as con­sumers sought to reduce expenses, par­tic­u­larly due to their per­cep­tion of olive oil as a lux­ury item,” she said.

The pro­ducer has to add some cre­ativ­ity to its mar­ket­ing cam­paign to deal with this sit­u­a­tion, which even­tu­ally worked.

“During the pan­demic, our pop­u­lar local cam­paigns began encour­ag­ing con­sumers to give pref­er­ence to Israeli agri­cul­tural prod­ucts, par­tic­u­larly olive oil, which helped us in increas­ing our sales con­sid­er­ably,” Hani said. ​“Surprisingly, rather than see­ing a decrease in our sales dur­ing 2020, the oppo­site occurred.”

“The Israeli con­sumers joined us in the effort to pro­mote local agri­cul­tural prod­ucts and started mak­ing pur­chases directly from the farm­ers,” she added.

Hani is opti­mistic about the upcom­ing har­vest and is expect­ing a bet­ter yield than the pre­vi­ous year.

“We are very excited head­ing into the 2021 har­vest sea­son,” she said. ​“The olive trees have started blos­som­ing, and the fruits are also get­ting mature. All these signs are point­ing toward a good har­vest.”

“We will con­tinue the lov­ing care of groves, pick­ing the best olives in the most pre­cise man­ner and pro­duc­ing the finest olive oil,” she added.