Olive Oil Sommelier Program Returns to California

The Olive Oil Sommelier Certification Program will return to Campbell, California September 10 – 15. It will be the sixth edi­tion of the ground­break­ing course pro­duced by the Olive Oil Times Education Lab in part­ner­ship with the International Culinary Center.

The six-day, two-level pro­gram fea­tures the world’s fore­most olive oil experts and edu­ca­tors in a com­pre­hen­sive series of lessons and work­shops span­ning pro­duc­tion, qual­ity man­age­ment, and advanced sen­sory assess­ment.

Those who suc­cess­fully com­plete the course receive olive oil som­me­lier cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and join a grow­ing com­mu­nity of olive oil sen­sory ana­lysts and edu­ca­tors.

So far, the pro­gram has offered five ses­sions in New York and one in California that saw stu­dents from every cor­ner of the world — 22 coun­tries in all.

Attendees have ranged from small pro­duc­ers to rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the very largest; from qual­ity-con­trol tech­ni­cians to pro­fes­sional chefs and restau­ra­teurs; from inde­pen­dent retail­ers to major dis­trib­u­tors.

Over the course of the week, par­tic­i­pants will be led through guided tast­ings of more than 130 sam­ples of olive oil from more than two dozen coun­tries by instruc­tors from Italy, Greece, Chile, Spain, New York and California.

The inter­ac­tive pro­gram spans the his­tory and cul­ture of olive oil, olive tree cul­ti­va­tion and har­vest­ing, milling and pro­duc­tion, health ben­e­fits and chem­istry, qual­ity man­age­ment, culi­nary appli­ca­tions and food pair­ing and, of course, the sen­sory eval­u­a­tion of extra vir­gin olive oil.

In fact, past par­tic­i­pants of the pro­gram have wasted lit­tle time putting their exper­tise and con­nec­tions to work around the world.

“Fabulous course with incred­i­ble amounts of infor­ma­tion that can (and will) be used as a ref­er­ence guide for years to come,” a pro­ducer from California who com­pleted the six-day pro­gram said.

Another pro­ducer from Turkey said, ​“I have learned much more than I expected. It was a very well struc­tured and orga­nized course.”

“I thought it was excel­lent,” said Jacqueline Tyburski, a dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strate­gist for a soft­ware and ser­vices com­pany in Portland, Oregon. ​“The qual­ity and range of instruc­tion were at a level that far sur­passed my expec­ta­tions.”

Willem Voorvaart, a Dutch finan­cial investor and part-time farmer who splits his time between London and France agreed. ​“I should have taken the course five years ago. Very instruc­tive, good top­ics, well struc­tured and excel­lent speak­ers,” he said.

To reg­is­ter for the pro­gram, visit the Olive Oil Times Education Lab web­site.