Students and Teachers at Croatian Elementary School Celebrate NYIOOC Success

“This is a great joy for all of us, for the stu­dents, teach­ers and all other school staff,” Mandica Starčević, the direc­tor of the Catholic Primary School in Šibenik, an ele­men­tary school in the Croatian city Šibenik, told Olive Oil Times.

The cel­e­bra­tions at the school came on April 27, dur­ing the feast of Our Lady of Good Counsel, when the school learned its Oblica Primary Catholic School Sibenik earned a Gold Award at the 2022 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

“This is the best con­fir­ma­tion that our oil is really worth it and recog­ni­tion for all those who work hard on olives,” Starčević said. ​“It is proof that we are on the right track in organic farm­ing and that in accor­dance with nature, our school coop­er­a­tive cre­ates a qual­ity prod­uct.”

The news of their suc­cess at the world’s largest olive oil qual­ity com­pe­ti­tion res­onated in Dalmatia, the largest Croatian olive grow­ing region, and beyond.

“We became famous, and until [April 27], only a few peo­ple knew that we also grow olives at our school coop­er­a­tive, Školjka,” Starčević said.

The coop­er­a­tive boasts 100 indige­nous Oblica trees planted 30 years ago. Along with stu­dents and teach­ers, Marko Rupić takes care of the grove through­out the year. He also coor­di­nates the olive har­vest and trans­for­ma­tion of the olives with the help of the head accoun­tant, Šime Petrović. 

Rupić and Petrović take care of all the agro-tech­ni­cal mea­sures through­out the year, from prun­ing to har­vest­ing. This lat­ter stage is when the stu­dents, school staff and the Školjka stu­dent coop­er­a­tive become involved.

The olives are hand­picked when the fruits reach the opti­mal stage of ripeness and are sent for pro­cess­ing every day.

“They are cold-processed. We store the oil in appro­pri­ate con­tain­ers at a tem­per­a­ture of 16 ºC to 18 ºC,” Starčević said. ​“Apart from com­mer­cial pur­poses, the oil is also used in school kitchens to pro­duce balms with Mediterranean herbs and as a school gift.”

“Over the years, many have praised our school oil as hav­ing excep­tional qual­ity,” she added. ​“This school year, we decided to check out what experts have to say, so we sent our oil to New York.”

Thus, the school’s Oblica extra vir­gin olive oil, native to Dalmatia and the most wide­spread vari­ety planted in the region, com­peted with 1,244 sam­ples from 28 coun­tries and was one of 112 oils from Croatia. 

The Oblica vari­ety is drought-resis­tant and adapt­able to var­i­ous ter­rains. These par­tic­u­lar olives were har­vested after 890 hours of sun­shine and 1,001 mil­lime­ters of rain. 

The organ­i­cally-pro­duced oil was char­ac­ter­ized by the NYIOOC’s panel of pro­fes­sional judges as slightly bit­ter and spicy, with pro­nounced fruiti­ness and hints of cut spring grass and aro­matic herbs. The judges also detected chicory and olive leaf notes along with the afore­men­tioned fla­vors.

By adding the extra vir­gin olive oil to the Official Guide to the World’s Best Olive Oils, the Catholic Primary School in Šibenik’s Oblica mono­va­ri­etal is the ​“god of gods,” as they say in Dalmatia. 

In the south­ern Croatian region, the ques­tion of what con­nects faith, leisure and a tasty snack is answered sim­ply: the sacred olive tree and olive oil.