5th NYIOOC Will Be the Biggest Yet

The fifth edi­tion of the New York International Olive Oil Competition (NYIOOC) — the world’s largest and most pres­ti­gious olive oil com­pe­ti­tion — will be held April 24 – 27 in down­town New York City. More than 900 entries from at least 26 coun­tries are expected to be ana­lyzed dur­ing the four-day event.

The win­ning entries — the best olive oils in the world for 2017 — will be unveiled at 5:30 on Thursday, April 27 dur­ing a press con­fer­ence streamed live to a global audi­ence of pro­duc­ers, dis­trib­u­tors, food indus­try pro­fes­sion­als and media out­lets.

At the same time, award win­ners will be listed in the Yearly Index of the World’s Best Olive Oils — the sec­ond most-vis­ited olive oil web­site in the world next to Olive Oil Times, and the Best Olive Oils Marketplace, where buy­ers can source the win­ning oils from retail­ers and dis­trib­u­tors who stock them.

A Printed Guide to the World’s Best Olive Oils

The New York International Olive Oil Competition and the edi­to­r­ial team of Olive Oil Times have teamed with a lead­ing pub­lisher to cre­ate the ​“2017 Guide to the World’s Best Olive Oils,” — a full color, printed book that will beau­ti­fully present the year’s NYIOOC award win­ners, along with com­pre­hen­sive infor­ma­tion on olive oil-pro­duc­ing regions, and the tast­ing, selec­tion and usage of high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils.

The book will be printed this spring imme­di­ately fol­low­ing the com­pe­ti­tion and avail­able through Amazon and other book­sellers.

A Professional Buyer’s Portal

Also new for this year, orga­niz­ers said, will be an online Professional Buyer’s Guide — a ded­i­cated por­tal designed for indus­try pro­fes­sion­als who seek high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils.

“The new por­tal will facil­i­tate trade between the win­ning pro­duc­ers and whole­sale buy­ers through a stream­lined inter­face and state-of-the-art tools to quickly pro­vide buy­ers with the exact infor­ma­tion they need to make sourc­ing deci­sions,” said Curtis Cord, the NYIOOC pres­i­dent, who added that his team is con­sult­ing with lead­ing importers and dis­trib­u­tors to design the por­tal.

“Buyers will be able to drill down to iden­tify award win­ners based on cri­te­ria they choose and begin the sourc­ing process with a suite of cus­tomized com­mu­ni­ca­tion and trad­ing tools,” Cord said. ​“In the end, this is about mak­ing it as easy as pos­si­ble for sup­ply-chain pro­fes­sion­als to stock high-qual­ity olive oils and get them to the kitchens where they right­fully deserve to be.” The ser­vice will be free for NYIOOC award-win­ning pro­duc­ers and buy­ers.

Larger Venue

The venue for the 2017 NYIOOC will be larger this year to accom­mo­date 200 atten­dees at the always-sold-out tast­ing event and press con­fer­ence on April 27, and to pro­vide more capac­ity for the media pool.

Also for 2017, the tast­ing event that pre­cedes the press con­fer­ence — and where vis­i­tors have the first oppor­tu­nity to taste the win­ning oils — will fea­ture an inter­na­tional tast­ing menu with each course designed to pair with a new award win­ner to illus­trate its unique char­ac­ter­is­tics.

Tickets to the tast­ing event and press con­fer­ence go on sale February 1 via the NYIOOC web­site.

An International Team of Experts from 9 Countries

The NYIOOC’s elite panel of judges is a ded­i­cated team of world-renowned experts in olive oil sen­sory assess­ment from nine coun­tries. NYIOOC pres­i­dent Curtis Cord, in keep­ing with a tra­di­tion of nam­ing three judges from dis­tinct regions as panel lead­ers each year, announced that the 2017 panel lead­ers are Lina Smith, Miciyo Yamada and Rob Harris.

Smith is a Boston-based olive oil edu­ca­tor, con­sul­tant and founder of the Boston Olive Oil Club, an edu­ca­tional orga­ni­za­tion that teaches the pub­lic to under­stand and rec­og­nize qual­ity olive oil. Smith stud­ied under the late vision­ary Marco Mugelli.

Yamada is an offi­cial taster for the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry Policies and a panel mem­ber of Associazione Interregionale Produttori Olivicoli in Italy

Harris is an inter­na­tional olive oil judge from Australia and Germany, and a five-time mem­ber of the NYIOOC panel.