Spanish Producers Celebrate Award-Winning Finish After Demanding Harvest

Olive farm­ers and millers in Spain, the world’s largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing coun­try, once again over­came extreme tem­per­a­tures and dry weather to pro­duce world-class extra vir­gin olive oil.

Eighty-two extra vir­gin olive oil brands from six autonomous com­mu­ni­ties earned awards at the 2024 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

According to the lat­est data, Spain pro­duced 846,800 tons in the 2023/24 crop year, sig­nif­i­cantly below the aver­age of the past half-decade but far higher than last year’s his­tor­i­cally poor har­vest.

Farmers and millers over­came the com­bi­na­tion of many olive trees pro­duc­ing less fruit and lower oil accu­mu­la­tion lev­els due to extreme spring tem­per­a­ture swings and the impacts of the drought.

High tem­per­a­tures in the autumn, when many pro­duc­ers started their early har­vests, also com­pli­cated efforts to pro­duce award-win­ning extra vir­gin olive oil.

This was espe­cially true in Andalusia, Spain’s largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region, where two-thirds of the country’s World Competition awards were won. Spain’s largest autonomous com­mu­nity pro­duced 574,295 tons in the 2023/24 crop year.

“This year has been espe­cially dif­fi­cult because the high tem­per­a­tures in October have made it dif­fi­cult for the olive tree to syn­the­size the oil and for us to per­form cold extrac­tion in the mill,” said Juan Ignacio, the chief exec­u­tive of La Olivilla, which earned its tenth con­sec­u­tive World Competition award for Dehesa de la Sabina.

He described win­ning the Gold Award for the organic medium-inten­sity Picual as ​“the hap­pi­est of end­ings” after a ​“com­pli­cated har­vest.”

“The award allows us to con­sol­i­date and posi­tion Dehesa de la Sabina as a ref­er­ence in the inter­na­tional mar­ket and dif­fer­en­ti­ate our oil from oth­ers,” Ignacio added.

Fellow Andalusian pro­ducer Luque Ecológico also cel­e­brated win­ning a Gold Award at the 2024 NYIOOC.

Similarly, the organic farm­ers over­came high tem­per­a­tures and drought to win a ninth straight award. Still, they admit­ted that the com­pany pro­duced about half as much olive oil as it would in an aver­age year.

While win­ning awards at the com­pe­ti­tion vin­di­cates the abil­ity of organic and sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion to achieve con­sis­tently high qual­ity, sales and qual­ity man­ager Rafael Gálvez said the awards are also among the best mar­ket­ing tools.

“These awards are undoubt­edly mar­ket­ing tools that help com­pa­nies posi­tion their prod­ucts as high qual­ity and are appre­ci­ated by cus­tomers,” he said. ​“It helps to posi­tion the image of the com­pany and help with sales.”

On the other side of Spain, farm­ers and millers in Catalonia earned the sec­ond-high­est amount of NYIOOC awards with 12.

During the har­vest, pro­duc­ers in the autonomous com­mu­nity, Spain’s fourth-high­est pro­duc­ing region, also over­came severe drought, includ­ing water restric­tions in Catalonia’s east­ern half.

“Winning the Silver Award at NYIOOC is an honor for us,” said Alba Comadran Turu, a spokesper­son at Lleida-based Guadea. ​“It rec­og­nizes our con­stant com­mit­ment to excel­lence and qual­ity in every step of our pro­duc­tion process. We are proud that our efforts are reflected in this pres­ti­gious award.”

She added, ​“We face var­i­ous chal­lenges in pro­duc­ing our high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil. ​“From vary­ing weather con­di­tions to the metic­u­lous selec­tion of olives, each stage of the process presents its own chal­lenges.”

Gaudea spe­cial­izes in pro­duc­ing Arbequina mono­va­ri­etal extra vir­gin olive oil with the Les Garrigues Protected Designation of Origin cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Comadran said win­ning at the NYIOOC will help raise the pro­file of their brand inter­na­tion­ally.

“We are con­fi­dent that the NYIOOC award will have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on our brand, espe­cially in the inter­na­tional mar­ket,” she said. ​“We hope that this recog­ni­tion will open new oppor­tu­ni­ties for us in the mar­ket and strengthen our posi­tion in the pro­duc­tion of pre­mium olive oils.”

Situated less than 200 kilo­me­ters from the Catalan coast­line, pro­duc­ers on Mallorca in the Balearic Islands com­bined to earn three awards at the World Competition.

“It’s an honor to have achieved this award, which we under­stand as recog­ni­tion for our con­stant improve­ment in our search for excel­lence,“ said Mariano Valdés.

The chief exec­u­tive of Son Moragues 1921 hailed the company’s Gold Award for an organic medium Empeltre. ​“This dis­tinc­tion con­firms that we are on the right path,” he said.

The com­pany focuses on pro­duc­ing olive oil from organ­i­cally cul­ti­vated cen­te­nary trees on dry stone ter­races in the heart of the Tramuntana Mountains.

“This year, we have been lucky in terms of weather, and the sea­son has been good,” Valdés said. ​“However, increas­ing cli­mate insta­bil­ity, irreg­u­lar rain­fall, mild win­ters and extreme sum­mers are mak­ing the sur­vival of this valu­able nat­ural and cul­tural her­itage increas­ingly dif­fi­cult.”

Son Moragues 1921 is expand­ing into new mar­kets, and Valdés believes that the award will help the com­pany attract new cus­tomers.

“Knowing the pres­tige that this dis­tinc­tion grants, we pre­dict an impor­tant boost in the con­sol­i­da­tion of our brand, which could not come at a bet­ter time,” he said.

On the Spanish main­land, pro­duc­ers in Castilla-La Mancha, the country’s sec­ond-largest pro­duc­ing region, cel­e­brated win­ning nine NYIOOC awards.

Among the win­ners were the more than 750 fam­i­lies who make up the Olivarera de Valdepeñas social coop­er­a­tive, also known as Colival, which earned a Gold Award for a medium Arbequina.

“Our suc­cess is work­ing as a team with the farmer,” said Eva Díaz, a spokes­woman for the coop­er­a­tive.

Since extra vir­gin olive oil begins with high-qual­ity fruit, she praised the mem­ber farm­ers for their cru­cial role in another suc­cess­ful sea­son in Valdepeñas, about two hours south of Madrid.

“We advise the farmer on the opti­mal time of har­vest­ing, sac­ri­fic­ing per­for­mance in exchange for qual­ity,” Díaz said. ​“This way, we obtain olive juice with organolep­tic qual­i­ties dif­fer­ent from other oils. In the oil mill, we pam­per the olives, work­ing with­out tem­per­a­ture, a quick process and obtain­ing a prod­uct full of polyphe­nols.”

While Castilla-La Mancha had not been spared from the impacts of the hot weather and drought, Díaz said the water stress had con­tributed to the cooperative’s suc­cess at the World Competition.

“Castilla-La Mancha expe­ri­enced a severe drought and very dry tem­per­a­tures in sum­mer, which caused water stress in the fruit and, there­fore, led to the pun­gency and bit­ter­ness in the oil,” she said.

Díaz believes sus­tained suc­cess at the World Competition – Colival has been awarded in each of the last nine edi­tions of the con­test – helps the coop­er­a­tive export into the lucra­tive North American mar­ket.

She said, ​“The impact is con­verted into a mar­ket­ing and sales strat­egy in the North American area. Awards are brand posi­tion­ing.”

In neigh­bor­ing Extremadura – Spain’s third-largest pro­duc­ing region, which expe­ri­enced the great­est pro­duc­tion increase in the 2023/24 crop year – the team behind Marqués de Valdueza also cel­e­brated the role their two lat­est World Competition awards would play in export­ing their prod­ucts.

The com­pany, which orig­i­nates in the House of Alvarez de Toledo and has been pro­duc­ing olive oil since 1624, cel­e­brated the Gold Awards for a pair of medium blends: its flag­ship Maqués de Valdueza and Merula brands.

“By con­stantly receiv­ing NYIOOC awards, we have been able to give tan­gi­ble proof to the mar­ket that Marqués de Valdueza is an olive oil that can be ranked among the best in the world,” said sales man­ager John Cancilla. ​“We feel that this acco­lade has enhanced the pres­tige of our oil and, in turn, helped sales in the very com­pet­i­tive U.S. mar­ket.”

Dispute the chal­lenges faced in pro­duc­ing its extra vir­gin olive oil, Cancilla attrib­uted the company’s suc­cess to a ver­ti­cally inte­grated farm­ing and milling that allows it to mon­i­tor qual­ity at every step in the process.

“The most sig­nif­i­cant ele­ment that gave us this out­stand­ing oil is the con­stant appli­ca­tion of our inte­grated pro­duc­tion method,” Cancilla con­firmed. ​“This method entails care­ful plan­ning and exe­cu­tion of norms and pro­ce­dures that give us a Marqués de Valdueza olive oil capa­ble of con­sis­tently win­ning the NYIOOC Gold Award, year after year.”

“We can see that all of our hard work is pay­ing off and that the cen­turies of olive oil tra­di­tion have not gone to waste on the Valdueza fam­ily,” he con­cluded.