Award-Winning Farm in Croatia Grows Its Brand in The Austrian Market

When the pro­duc­ers behind Avistria began pro­duc­ing olive oil in 2015, it marked a com­plete change from their pre­vi­ous pro­fes­sions.

Rudolf Nemetschke worked in invest­ment bank­ing and asset man­age­ment while his wife, Beatrix, ran a con­sult­ing and pub­lic rela­tions com­pany.

They decided to research wood­lands and plan­ta­tions as invest­ments, espe­cially since Nemetschke was par­tic­u­larly famil­iar with the field of alter­na­tive invest­ing – asset classes that exclude stocks, bonds and cur­ren­cies.

Initially, there were doubts about olive farm­ing as the Nemetschkes said they had aller­gic reac­tions to some super­mar­ket olive oils they used at home. However, they soon real­ized there was a sig­nif­i­cant gap in the Austrian mar­ket for high-qual­ity olive oils.

They pur­chased land in the Sveti Lovrec region of Istria, Croatia’s north­west­ern penin­sula. Historically, Sveti Lovrec was the seat of Venetian bish­ops, who were renowned for mak­ing wise land invest­ments.

Avistria quickly built a port­fo­lio of autochtho­nous olives – Buza, Carbonazza, Bijelica and Oblica – and some Italian vari­eties – Itrana and Frantoio.

The cou­ple opted for these cul­ti­vars instead of ones best suited for high-den­sity and super-high-den­sity groves to farm more sus­tain­ably, they said.

Ahead of the 2021 har­vest, Nemetschke told Olive Oil Times that he has a pos­i­tive out­look, despite the region at large expect­ing a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in the har­vest.

“The out­look is pos­i­tive, as our out­put will rise dra­mat­i­cally this year,” he said. ​“The 1,600 trees planted in 2016 have started to pro­duce notice­able amounts of fruit. It will be a chal­lenge for us to strengthen our direct mar­ket­ing efforts to sell these amounts of oil.”

While the unsea­son­ably late frosts that plagued other Istrian pro­duc­ers have not impacted Avistria, Nemetschke said he was set­back by the par­tic­u­larly hot and dry sum­mer.

“In the spring and begin­ning of the sum­mer this year, the blos­som­ing of the trees started very late, pos­ing a risk that the flow­ers would be des­ic­cated dur­ing the hot and dry con­di­tions,” he said.

As a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure, he sprin­kled the trees with water early in the morn­ing, which allowed the sur­vival of the blos­soms. He now antic­i­pates that the ripe olives cur­rently adorn­ing the branches of his trees will be plen­ti­ful.

For the upcom­ing year, Avistria has already care­fully planned how they will ensure the high­est pos­si­ble qual­ity prod­uct, from har­vest­ing the olives to trans­form­ing them at the mill.

Nemetschke said that he will espe­cially focus on how to best store the oils in the roughly month-long period before they are sold to Avistria’s clients. He also wants to improve his blend­ing skills.

“Our Istrian Blend has con­stantly won Silver Awards at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, and we want to do bet­ter here,” Nemetschke said.

At the 2021 NYIOOC, Avistria earned a Gold and two Silver Awards for a del­i­cate Istria Buza, and del­i­cate Pendolino and del­i­cate blend, respec­tively.

In 2020, Avistria also earned a Silver Award for the same del­i­cate blend, com­prised of Leccino, Istria Buza and Istrian Bjelica olives. They also won two Gold Awards for a pair of mono­va­ri­etals.

“Our Istrian Blend got its award for the sec­ond time, which is a big suc­cess,” Nemetschke said. ​“Participation in com­pe­ti­tions is the most impor­tant fac­tor of qual­ity con­trol in our com­pany.”

“The next step [was] the review of all pro­duc­tion steps on the basis of the results,” he added.

Along with the annual task of har­vest­ing the olives and tak­ing care of the trees, Nemetschke also has his sights set on diver­si­fy­ing Avistria.

“The next big tar­get will be build­ing a new farm­house, includ­ing a small mill, but that is more of a five-year project,” he said.

In the mean­time, Nemetschke con­tin­ues to develop his mar­ket­ing strat­egy based on their tar­get cus­tomer base of pri­vate clients, restau­rants, hotels and some spe­cialty stores.

Through direct mar­ket­ing, Avistria is keen to build client rela­tion­ships through an ini­tial guided tast­ing of their oils.

Nemetschke said this process puts par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on inform­ing poten­tial and exist­ing clients about their ded­i­ca­tion to qual­ity at every step of the process and uti­liza­tion of a direct deliv­ery ser­vice for their oils.

Additionally, Nemetschke wants to bet­ter inform his cus­tomers about their dif­fer­ent types of extra vir­gin olive oil, how to use and store the oils and how best to pair the olive oils with dif­fer­ent foods.

“We do not invest in clas­si­cal mar­ket­ing tools,” he said. ​“The only infor­ma­tion chan­nel we use is social media.”

“This is how we keep up with our clients,” he added. ​“Short sto­ries, videos and pho­tos pro­vide news and infor­ma­tion on our busi­ness and prod­ucts.”

A few excep­tions to this model are made for clients from the restau­rant and hos­pi­tal­ity sec­tor. For exam­ple, chefs are invited to visit the olive grove in Istria and get an idea of the land, the peo­ple involved and the qual­ity of the prod­uct.

“Another com­pet­i­tive advan­tage is that we are the only Istrian pro­ducer with Austrian roots, and no lan­guage bar­ri­ers,” Nemetschke said. ​“We pro­vide 100-per­cent trans­parency with our har­vest­ing and man­age­ment activ­i­ties. Uniquely, our prod­ucts are avail­able directly from us and deliv­ered per­son­ally.”