Sicilian and Sardinian Producers Attribute Award-Winning Quality to Innovation, Sustainability

After a sea­son marked by drought and macro­eco­nomic dif­fi­cul­ties, pro­duc­ers from Italy’s two largest islands, Sardinia and Sicily, cel­e­brated their inter­na­tional suc­cess at the 2023 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

The drought that affected all of Italy did not spare the two regions, which, due to the effects of an ​‘off-year’ (the phase of lower pro­duc­tion in the olive trees’ nat­ural alter­nate bear­ing cycle) suf­fered a slight decrease in pro­duc­tion vol­umes.

Yet the insu­lar farm­ers main­tained high-qual­ity stan­dards, rec­og­nized by the panel of judges at the world’s largest olive oil qual­ity com­pe­ti­tion.

A con­tin­u­ously evolv­ing approach involv­ing every detail of the pro­duc­tion process, from tech­no­log­i­cal fea­tures at the farm level to wide-reach­ing envi­ron­men­tal aspects, has helped these pro­duc­ers to make their way to the global stage and con­tribute to the over­all suc­cess of their coun­try – Italy obtained 174 awards from 224 entries, which is one of the high­est suc­cess rates at the 2023 NYIOOC.

Credit for the five awards deliv­ered to Sardinia goes to Pasquale Manca and his San Giuliano extra vir­gin olive oil brands, Fruttato and L’Originale, which obtained two Gold Awards, and Monocultivar Bosana, Organic and Primér, which each received a Silver Award.

“We are glad to receive these recog­ni­tions, also because they pay off the invest­ments we recently made in the mill,” he told Olive Oil Times. ​“In par­tic­u­lar, at the end of the last har­vest, in November, we installed an ultra­sound sys­tem on two of our four pro­duc­tion lines.”

“Despite the delay, due to the global prob­lems related to the sup­ply­ing of raw mate­ri­als, we set it up in time to test it on a small part of the fruits. We had some inter­est­ing feed­back, which makes us think that the con­tri­bu­tion of this tech­nol­ogy to next year’s yield can be sig­nif­i­cant,” he added.

Investments are also being made in new lands, par­tic­u­larly those once used for pas­ture, which are now dis­carded and uncul­ti­vated.

“Since sheep grazed on these plots for cen­turies, they are rich in nitro­gen,” Manca said. ​“We are acquir­ing new prop­er­ties of this kind, where we will plant new olive trees in the com­ing years.”

Now, Domenico Manca man­ages about 150,000 trees and plans to dou­ble this total in three or four years and dou­ble it again in 10 years, with the goal to reach 1,000 hectares.

“We are con­stantly expand­ing and evolv­ing, and to do so, we spend time exper­i­ment­ing, both in the mill and in the groves, also col­lab­o­rat­ing with researchers,” Manca said.

Located in north­west­ern Sardinia, in the vast plain of Nurra, his groves are arranged accord­ing to dif­fer­ent plant­ing pat­terns, from tra­di­tional to super-high-den­sity, includ­ing the mainly native Sardinian vari­eties of Bosana, Nera di Oliena and Semidana.

“We also have Coratina from Puglia as well as the Catalan vari­eties, Arbosana and Arbequina, which we value not only from a busi­ness point of view but also because there is a par­tic­u­lar con­nec­tion between their birth­place and ours, Alghero, since we are a lin­guis­tic minor­ity that speaks ancient Catalan,” Manca said.

Meanwhile, pro­duc­ers across Italy’s other major Mediterranean island cel­e­brated another year of suc­cess at the World Competition.

The pro­duc­ers behind Mandranova, in the province of Agrigento, cel­e­brated a Gold Award for a Nocellara del Belice mono­va­ri­etal awarded yearly at the NYIOOC.

“Receiving recog­ni­tion at the NYIOOC every year is very impor­tant to us because it allows us to guar­an­tee the con­sumer our con­stant com­mit­ment to high qual­ity,” said Silvia Di Vincenzo, who man­ages the com­pany with her hus­band, Giuseppe and son Gabriele.

“We have been par­tic­i­pat­ing since the begin­ning, and this also gave us the oppor­tu­nity to com­pare our­selves with the other pro­duc­ers over time,” she added.

Close to the south­west­ern coast, in Palma di Montechiaro, about 10,000 Nocellara, Cerasuola, Biancolilla and Giarraffa trees lie at the heart of the estate, includ­ing a hos­pi­tal­ity resort.

“We have been olive grow­ers for five gen­er­a­tions,” Di Vincenzo said. ​“Once, the prop­erty included a vine­yard, but we decided to focus exclu­sively on olive pro­duc­tion, which is organ­i­cally man­aged, fol­low­ing high stan­dards of sus­tain­abil­ity.”

According to the same prin­ci­ples of qual­ity and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, they ded­i­cate them­selves to the cul­ti­va­tion of almonds – the estate con­tains a grove of 15,000 trees.

“The com­pany is in con­tin­u­ous evo­lu­tion as we try to improve every stage of the pro­duc­tion process,” she said. ​“For exam­ple, in the begin­ning, we pruned the trees accord­ing to the free vase form; now, we do it accord­ing to the poly­conic vase method. Before, we col­lected the fruits only with facil­i­ta­tors; now we per­form three dif­fer­ent types of har­vests to speed up the oper­a­tions and pick still green olives.”

The fruits are crushed in the state-of-the-art com­pany mill that uses a two-phase water-sav­ing sys­tem. It boasts a new tech­nol­ogy that reduces the pro­cess­ing time increas­ing phe­nols extrac­tion and a chiller that refrig­er­ates the equip­ment.

“We try to make our prod­ucts in the best pos­si­ble way, not so much for busi­ness, but rather because we are deeply in love with extra vir­gin olive oil, and this indeed is what inspires us to keep the qual­ity high,” Di Vincenzo said.

Situated just to the west of Mandranova’s groves is the vil­lage of Villafranca Sicula, home to the Loco Galbasa organic farm, which won a Silver Award with its first NYIOOC entry for a mono­va­ri­etal of Biancolilla.

“This recog­ni­tion shows us that our com­pany had a great start and is mov­ing in the right direc­tion,” said co-owner Marco Gagliano. ​“In fact, the farm was estab­lished in 1963 and was man­aged by our uncle.”

“When my cousin and I took over last year, we con­ceived the brand design and focused on high qual­ity,” he added. ​“Being the first time that we par­tic­i­pate and after such a short time since the start of our project, this award gives us even greater sat­is­fac­tion.”

The 20-hectare farm is located in a val­ley where 4,800 olive trees thrive over­look­ing the sea – cen­turies-old Biancolilla trees, which rep­re­sent the vast major­ity of the orchard, are flanked by the other local vari­eties, Cerasuola and Nocellara del Belice.

“On clear days, we can spot the island of Pantelleria,” said co-owner Sandro Domenico Musso. ​“Here, the olive groves have devel­oped very well, thanks to the dry cli­mate that pre­vents sev­eral dis­eases.”

The estate includes a farm­house dat­ing back to 1860, when many olive trees were planted. Among these are small per­cent­ages of neglected vari­eties such as Passulunara, Giarraffa and Bottone di Gallo.

“They have a high his­tor­i­cal and botan­i­cal value, rep­re­sent­ing a true her­itage that we safe­guard care­fully. Each plant is like a child to us, as we know each of them,” Musso said. ​“We worked hard to improve the com­pany, always with the care of the envi­ron­ment and its bio­di­ver­sity at heart.”

To main­tain the humid­ity and improve soil fer­til­ity, they adopt sus­tain­able prac­tices, includ­ing mulching and green manure. Furthermore, they recently intro­duced some api­aries in the grove to pro­duce organic honey and espe­cially for their impor­tant role in the ecosys­tem.

“Again, for rea­sons of sus­tain­abil­ity, we rely on the lat­est gen­er­a­tion mill that is within walk­ing dis­tance from the farm,” Musso said. ​“Since it is a two-phase machin­ery, it does not require water, and we can save much of this pre­cious resource also thanks to our ancient olive trees that do not need to be irri­gated.”

In the south-east­ern cor­ner of the island, in the vil­lage of Buccheri, Siracura, the pro­duc­ers behind Agrestis cel­e­brated yet another Gold Award for their mono­va­ri­etal Fiore D’Oro, which is a Monti Iblei Protected Designation of Origin-cer­ti­fied oil.

“Every time, it is a joy to receive an award in such a pres­ti­gious com­pe­ti­tion, which helps us olive grow­ers to be val­ued,” said Pietro Nicotra. ​“Especially at the end of these very com­pli­cated years marked by the dif­fi­cul­ties due to the pan­demic, the war and weather adver­si­ties, it is an even greater sat­is­fac­tion to be able to achieve this result.”

Along with his father, Lorenzo Nicotra, and asso­ciate, Salvatore Paparone, he man­ages a 50-hectare orchard with 10,000 olive trees. Ancient Tonda Iblea trees, with some rows of Biancolilla and Nocellara, flour­ish on the slopes of Mount Lauro, an extinct vol­cano. They are partly scat­tered on steep ter­races at about 600 to 700 meters above sea level.

“Altitude and soil struc­ture are not easy to man­age and require much more work,” Nicotra said. ​“However, there are also pos­i­tive aspects, like a strong tem­per­a­ture vari­a­tion between day and night and an effec­tive drainage of rain­wa­ter, which have ben­e­fi­cial effects for the plants and fruits and help us to improve our product’s organolep­tic pro­files.”

“The trees are not irri­gated, and this allows us to pre­serve this very impor­tant resource, as sus­tain­abil­ity is at the core of our entre­pre­neur­ial vision,” he added.

Arranged accord­ing to an exten­sive plant­ing pat­tern and located up to 10 meters away from each other, some of the trees are almost 1,000 years old.

For a cou­ple of years now, the com­pany has been car­ry­ing out a project for their adop­tion, through which the par­tic­i­pants estab­lish a spe­cial con­nec­tion with the adopted trees, vis­it­ing the farm and receiv­ing some of the oil they pro­duce every year.

“This project helps us to recover aban­doned groves,” Nicotra said. ​“The phi­los­o­phy of the com­pany since its foun­da­tion 20 years ago is, rather than cre­at­ing new plan­ta­tions, to safe­guard the ancient ones.”

“We indeed started by recov­er­ing aban­doned groves, also with a view to save them from the risk of ever more fre­quent wild­fires, there­fore with the aim of pre­serv­ing the impor­tant her­itage rep­re­sented by these majes­tic, ancient olive trees,” he con­cluded.