Organic Producers from Puglia Triumph at World Competition

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

It is one of the most impor­tant olive oil-pro­duc­ing regions in the world and Puglia is once again one of the regions where pro­duc­ers have seen their brands win the top awards at the 2021 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

Puglian pro­duc­ers had to over­come chal­lenges, includ­ing the impacts of the Covid-19 pan­demic on labor and the mar­ket, the unpre­dictable cli­mate with its extra­or­di­nary weather events such as drought, heat­waves and hail­storms, and the con­tin­ued spread of the deadly Xylella fas­tidiosa pathogen.

Those events cou­pled with the alter­nate bear­ing sea­son for the olive trees decreased the over­all Puglian olive yield in 2020, with the har­vest falling 31.7 per­cent.

“During the pan­demic period, we have been forced to work even more, because of the inevitable lack of work­force and because nature does not wait,” Antonella Rosati, the owner of Tenuta Foggiali, told Olive Oil Times. ​“Even more, because we had to face and pre­vent the fur­ther spread of the Xylella fas­tidiosa bac­te­ria.”

Tenuta Foggiali is a 12-hectare, 3,000-tree farm founded in 1895, with an estab­lished tra­di­tion of excel­lence in organic grow­ing.

“Organic farm­ing and sus­tain­abil­ity are our lifestyle,” Rosati said. ​“The loca­tion of our estate is in the mid­dle of the home­land of mil­len­nial olive trees, which should soon be included among the UNESCO World Heritage sites. We are proud to take care of and pre­serve trees that are up to 2,000 years old.”

“To fight Xylella fas­tidiosa, pro­tect the trees and pre­serve the envi­ron­ment, we adopted means of pre­ci­sion farm­ing, which allow us to apply rel­e­vant actions such as water­ing or san­i­tary treat­ments only when needed,” she added. ​“Although these devices can­not detect the Xylella bac­te­ria in a tree, they are part of sev­eral imple­men­ta­tion projects.”

Despite these chal­lenges, Tenuta Foggiali earned a Gold Award for its Rosati Fruttato, an organic medium blend.

“At the end of the sea­son, we hand­pick each cul­ti­var’s olives sep­a­rately and decide which ones have the char­ac­ter­is­tics to be included in our two blends,” Rosati said. ​“Rosati Fruttato is a blend from dif­fer­ent vari­eties with their own intense tast­ing notes.”

“It is the result of our efforts to bal­ance the strong herba­ceous Pecholine aroma with the robust but appeal­ing Coratina arti­choke after­taste and the inter­est­ing pep­pery note of the Cima di Melfi olives,” she added.

“We man­age to reach this result because, as approved tasters who need to keep the palate sharp, we had the chance to sam­ple and appre­ci­ate some of the best Italian olive oils, thus striv­ing to fine-tune our blend­ing as a unique prod­uct,” Rosati con­tin­ued.

Meanwhile, the company’s Rosati Monocultivar Bio won a Silver Award, over­com­ing spe­cific chal­lenges in its pro­duc­tion to tri­umph at the NYIOOC.

“We do usu­ally har­vest our Leccino trees at the begin­ning of October, a very sen­si­tive period of the year when tem­per­a­tures stay high, which has hap­pened in recent years, and com­bine with some night­time humid­ity to nur­ture the olive fruit fly,” Rosati said.

“That means more work for us: the intense mon­i­tor­ing of the fruits, the deploy­ment of hor­mone-based traps and, in the end, the rush to har­vest as soon as the olives turn pur­ple and keep dru­pes safe from even­tual attacks of the fly,” she added.

“The olive oil that comes out of this activ­ity fills us with pride as it offers a unique creamy, full-body char­ac­ter with an almond after­taste, very typ­i­cal of the Leccino grown in our area,” Rosati con­cluded.

With its Gold Award, the De Robertis Chiaroscuro con­firmed its extra­or­di­nary qual­ity for the fourth year in a row.

“We are proud for the care we ded­i­cate to our trees,” Paolo Milicic, co-owner of De Robertis Chiaroscuro, told Olive Oil Times. ​“We have a team of local third and fourth-gen­er­a­tion arborists, spe­cial­ists who deeply under­stand the needs of our Coratina trees and help us ensure that every tree gets pre­cisely the right amount of love and nutri­ents, such as water at the appro­pri­ate time and in the cor­rect vol­umes.”

“We are very hon­ored and hum­bled by the recog­ni­tion we have received,” Milicic added. ​“It is very sat­is­fy­ing to see our hard work receive such an award year after year from the panel of inter­na­tional experts.”

Milicic explained how in the face of the pan­demic, his com­pany turned to dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing chan­nels.

“The biggest chal­lenge we faced came from the travel restric­tions that lim­ited our abil­ity to explore new mar­kets and meet with clients,” he said. ​“It is hard to have an elec­tronic olive tast­ing at the dis­tance.”

“Still, our team man­aged to over­come those hur­dles, devel­oped our online activ­i­ties and man­aged to use tech­nol­ogy to stay in con­tact with our clients and even forge some new excit­ing part­ner­ships over­seas,” Milicic added.

Terradiva Organic Farm was also among the award-win­ning pro­duc­ers at the 2021 NYIOOC, earn­ing Gold for its Allegro con Brio brand, an organic Coratina mono­va­ri­etal.

“It is a spe­cial extra vir­gin olive oil that comes from a very spe­cific ter­ri­tory, with its own iden­tity, herbal scents and a com­plex fla­vor with bal­anced bit­ter and piquant notes,” owner Angela Lobascio told Olive Oil Times. ​“It is an extra vir­gin olive oil that tells the story of a whole fam­ily and its quest for qual­ity.”

Terradiva has ancient roots in its ter­ri­tory, with the company’s choice to fol­low organic farm­ing pro­to­cols dat­ing back to 1998.

Lobascio said that the work on the olive trees and the approach to mar­ket­ing their extra vir­gin olive oils had to be com­pletely re-orga­nized in the wake of the pan­demic.

“We had to face the sus­pen­sion of ship­ments to restau­rants and those small high-qual­ity gas­tro­nomic food shops which did not have orga­nized home deliv­ery ser­vices,” she said.

“We have seen grow­ing demand from fam­i­lies, coop­er­a­tive buy­ing groups and pri­vate cus­tomers mostly located in cen­tral and north­ern Italy,” Lobascio added, also ref­er­enc­ing the high num­ber of sales from the com­pa­ny’s online shop with its European cus­tomers.

She explained how dur­ing the pan­demic the ​“direct con­tact and human inter­ac­tion between our fam­ily-owned busi­ness and our clients have become even more rel­e­vant. We have seen peo­ple con­sid­er­ing qual­ity, safety and ori­gin of the food ingre­di­ents they were buy­ing more.”

Meanwhile, near Salento, on Puglia’s east­ern coast with the Ionian Sea, the pro­duc­ers behind Olivottoil Cellino cel­e­brated their Silver Award for a blend that comes from about 900 trees, most of which are about 50 years old.

“Olivottoil Cellino comes from Cellina and Cima di Melfi olives,” Pier Sante Olivotto, the company’s pres­i­dent, told Olive Oil Times. ​“They have been selected to pro­duce a uniquely healthy and tasty extra vir­gin olive oil: Cellina olives for their vit­a­min E and the yel­low color, Pecholine-Cima di Melfi olives for their polyphe­nols and green color.”

Sante Olivotto empha­sized that Olivottoil focuses on the healthy qual­i­ties of extra vir­gin olive oil.

“We think of extra vir­gin olive oil as the best super­food ever,” he said. ​“Most micronu­tri­ents must be fat-sol­u­ble to become bioavail­able and olive oil is the per­fect vehi­cle to bring them to all the cells in our body after inges­tion.”

“Micronutrients come into olives to defend them from insect attacks dur­ing the dry sea­son,” Sante Olivotto said. ​“Polyphenols are in the olives skin to bring the defen­sive bit­ter­ness and toco­pherols into the nuts, which gives life to a new tree.”

Despite the olive trees; nat­ural defenses and health­ful prop­er­ties, Sante Olivotto also empha­sized the urgency required to stop the spread of Xylella fas­tidiosa.

“We ask for a call to arms to the world­wide research cen­ters to col­lab­o­rate in help­ing Italy fight­ing the dis­ease that is pro­gres­sively killing the 60 mil­lion olive trees in this region,” he said.

“Puglia has the best geo-cli­mate for olives: karst ter­rain, two seas, the Ionian and Adriatic, flat iron-rich land, no rain dur­ing sum­mer. It is located on the 40^th par­al­lel, and has 3,000 milling machines,” Sante Olivotto added.

Giovanni Simeone, the owner of the ancient Masseria Fortificata Pavoni, has expanded the tra­di­tional farm founded in the 18^th cen­tury.

His extra vir­gin olive oils have repeat­edly con­firmed their qual­ity, win­ning top acco­lades at the NYIOOC. In the 2021 edi­tion, the com­pany earned one Gold Award and one Silver Award for a pair of mono­va­ri­etal oils.

“My mem­o­ries as a kid are con­nected to the olive trees my grand­fa­ther used to grow, the joy­ful har­vest­ing sea­son, unfor­get­table mem­o­ries for me,” Simeone told Olive Oil Times.

When the Pavoni farm became part of his Masseria, Simeone worked hard to re-con­nect it with the ter­ri­tory.

“It has olive trees spread over 20 hectares. The first thing I did was to restore its dig­nity by trans­form­ing the entire oper­a­tion to organic farm­ing,” he said ​“Once we obtained the organic farm­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, I became a cer­ti­fied olive oil taster in Rome.”

“Since 2016, we have won Gold Awards at the NYIOOC,” Simeone added. ​“Our olive oils are exam­ined every year by Accredia, which cer­ti­fies their organolep­tic and chem­i­cal qual­i­ties. It is a true pas­sion I hope to com­mu­ni­cate to all my clients.”