Second Olive Oil Sommelier Course Sold Out

The sec­ond Olive Oil Sommelier Certification Course at the International Culinary Center (ICC) has reached capac­ity and closed reg­is­tra­tion, orga­niz­ers said, and there are only a few spots remain­ing for the Levels 2 and 3 courses imme­di­ately fol­low­ing.

All three lev­els will be held February 4 – 10 at the Culinary Center’s Soho cam­pus in New York City.

Following the suc­cess­ful, first-level ses­sion in October that also quickly sold out, the con­densed, 7‑day pro­gram offers the oppor­tu­nity to earn the som­me­lier cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in one inten­sive week.

Students from as far as Tunisia, Dubai, Canada, Mexico, Austria and Colombia are reg­is­tered to attend the ses­sion, where more than 100 oils from every region in the world will be sam­pled in guided tast­ings.

The direc­tor of the International Culinary Center Olive Oil Program, Curtis Cord, said stu­dents were in store for an unri­valed edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence designed to fos­ter a deep under­stand­ing of olive oil qual­ity assess­ment. Cord con­ceived the pro­gram with the late Dorothy Cann Hamilton, the ICC founder.

“The responses to our first ses­sion in October have been over­whelm­ingly pos­i­tive and extremely help­ful in guid­ing the devel­op­ment of this ground­break­ing course,” Cord said. ​“We’re so proud to be work­ing with the International Culinary Center to offer a pro­gram in olive oil sen­sory assess­ment like no other in the world.”

While stu­dents of the som­me­lier pro­gram have included such diverse pro­fes­sion­als as pro­duc­ers, mar­keters, importers, mer­chants, food buy­ers, qual­ity-con­trol man­agers, chefs, jour­nal­ists and lawyers, Cord said the pro­gram is designed to teach the vital skills of sen­sory analy­sis to any­one con­cerned with olive oil qual­ity.

Instructors from five coun­tries will lead tast­ings of an inter­na­tional selec­tion of oils to expose stu­dents to an unri­valed diver­sity of olive cul­ti­vars and fla­vor pro­files, build­ing an inter­nal sen­sory library to steer future deci­sions on mat­ters of olive oil qual­ity and usage.

Cord said a guid­ing mis­sion of the pro­gram is to build a net­work of olive oil experts who can, in turn, set out to edu­cate oth­ers on olive oil qual­ity mat­ters and change the many mis­con­cep­tions that under­mine the value of one of the world’s most impor­tant foods.

Or, as Thomas Sheridan, a first-level stu­dent, and an olive oil importer put it, ​“a course that will begin build­ing an army of edu­cated olive oil pro­fes­sion­als.”

The next three-level pro­gram will be offered again in September.