Growers in Croatia Await Contest Results

After sub­mit­ting 92 entries, Croatian olive grow­ers eagerly await the 2024 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition results.

On the first day of the com­pe­ti­tion, 40 win­ners were announced. Two Croatians were among them, with OPG Celini and OPG Ante Vulin each earn­ing Gold Awards for a medium-inten­sity blend and medium Oblica, respec­tively.

Farmers and millers in Istria and Dalmatia, the country’s two main pro­duc­ing regions, hope the awards will com­pen­sate for a dis­ap­point­ing start to the 2023/24 crop year.

Olive oil pro­duc­tion has fallen by an esti­mated 30 to 40 per­cent com­pared to last year, mainly due to unfa­vor­able cli­matic con­di­tions. According to International Olive Council data, Croatia pro­duced 5,100 tons of olive oil in 2022/23.

Despite the sig­nif­i­cant decline, pro­duc­ers are con­fi­dent they crafted high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil.

“Whoever sent sam­ples of his oil can hope for good results,” said mul­ti­ple award-win­ning Tomislav Duvnjak from Vodice in Dalmatia.

Since Duvnjak launched a coor­di­nated effort to orga­nize and help finance small Dalmatian pro­duc­ers to send entries to New York in 2021, Croatia has con­sis­tently been one of the biggest win­ners at the World Competition.

In 2023, Croatian pro­duc­ers earned 105 awards from 131 entries. Only Italy and Spain earned more awards. Similar sit­u­a­tions plaid out in 2022 and 2021, with Croatians earn­ing the third-most (96) and fourth-most (87) awards, respec­tively.

Before Duvnjak’s ini­tia­tive, Croatian pro­duc­ers earned between 20 and 50 awards yearly.

He also pointed out that Croatia con­sis­tently has one of the high­est suc­cess rates, reach­ing or exceed­ing 80 per­cent in the last three years, includ­ing a tally of 90 per­cent in 2022.

Ivica Vlatković, an award-win­ning pro­ducer and vocal advo­cate for the Croatian olive oil sec­tor, believes the small coun­try home to slightly less than four mil­lion peo­ple will soon be syn­ony­mous with qual­ity.

He cites a long-stand­ing tra­di­tion of olive grow­ing and olive oil pro­duc­tion, many autochtho­nous vari­eties – includ­ing Oblica, Levantinka, Istrian Bjelica, Istrian Buza and Krvavica olives – as one of the rea­sons for the country’s ris­ing inter­na­tional pro­file.

Vlatković has also seen the trend of increas­ing demand for organic olive oil and believes Croatia has great poten­tial for organic pro­duc­tion. He said there are 1,956 hectares of organic olive groves in Croatia, nearly three times the num­ber of organic olive groves in the United States.

However, Croatians point out that high-qual­ity organic pro­duc­tion comes at a cost, with Croatian extra vir­gin olive oils retail­ing for up to 30 per­cent more than the European aver­age.

Srećko Gross, a phar­ma­cist and the pres­i­dent of the Zagreb Olive Institute, a farm­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion in the cap­i­tal, attrib­uted these high prices to the ele­vated pro­duc­tion costs asso­ci­ated with organic farm­ing.

However, he warned that high prices had led to an uptick in olive oil adul­ter­ation and fraud, which data from local author­i­ties con­firm.

In one of the most recent con­trols, 13 out of 25 ran­domly selected sam­ples labeled extra vir­gin failed to meet the grade.

One of the seven Croatian brands selected failed the inspec­tion, along with five of nine Italian-branded oils and seven of nine Spanish brands.

Gross high­lighted the role of the NYIOOC in pro­mot­ing small-scale farm­ers who con­cen­trate on qual­ity over quan­tity instead of white-label brands that sell cheaper blends of vir­gin or extra vir­gin olive oil blended with olive pomace oil, some of which are mis­la­beled.

“There are no refiner­ies here… such brands should be excluded from the game,” Gross said. ​“We, as a small coun­try, should con­tinue to develop the pro­duc­tion of top-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils, for which we are increas­ingly known all over the world.”