Event Celebrating New Oils Returns to Paris for Fourth Edition

Olio Nuovo Days return to Paris this January for its fourth edi­tion. Producers from around the world will sub­mit their sam­ples of olio nuovo to the founder of the annual event, Emmanuelle Déchelette.

“I received the olio nuovo ear­lier this week and I’m very excited,” Déchelette told Olive Oil Times. Olio nuovo comes from the very first olive har­vest of the sea­son and is unfil­tered and unracked. These oils tend to be the fresh­est of the sea­son, but they also have a shorter shelf life since they are unfil­tered.

Déchelette and her team will select thirty sam­ples and invite their pro­duc­ers to attend and com­pete in the event.

“I can’t have more than thirty olive oils because I have to deal with 30 restau­rants, which is a lot,” she said.

Each pro­ducer will have their oil fea­tured in a dish cooked by a pro­fes­sional chef at a top-rated Parisian restau­rant.

“I only choose fancy restau­rants because it is impor­tant for the pro­duc­ers,” Déchelette said. ​“They want to have chefs with spe­cial skills, Michelin star chefs, such as [Julien Dumas of] Lucas Carton. All of these chefs have spe­cial­i­ties, so when these kinds of peo­ple choose one olive oil, it means some­thing.”

For Déchelette, this phase of the event ben­e­fits both the pro­duc­ers and chefs. She espe­cially sees this as an oppor­tu­nity to teach French chefs how to bet­ter uti­lize olive oils in their dishes.

“The main prob­lem with chefs [here] is that they are not trained on olive oil,” she said. ​“They used to use very flat olive oil and now I’ve started to work with them and show them that olive oil has to give some­thing spe­cial to what they cook.”

“It is a dif­fer­ent approach and they like it, so now the chef won’t use one olive oil to go with every­thing, they use olive oil the way it has to be used, as a condi­ment,” she added.

Eric Briffard, the exec­u­tive chef and direc­tor of culi­nary arts at Le Cordon Bleu Institute, will return to pre­side over the com­pe­ti­tion and head up the jury panel for the sec­ond straight year. He embraces the event as a way for peo­ple to expe­ri­ence the advan­tages of sea­son­al­ity in food; eat­ing cer­tain things when they are the fresh­est.

“I was brought up at the rhythm of nature,” he said. ​“By respect­ing sea­son­al­ity, we also show­case our arti­sanal culi­nary her­itage in the face of the agro-food indus­try that is stan­dard­iz­ing our palates.”

During the com­pe­ti­tion phase of the event, each pro­ducer will vie for three awards: over­all oil qual­ity, best bot­tling and best label­ing. The com­pe­ti­tion is divided into two rounds, a qual­i­fy­ing and a final phase. The top six oils from the qual­i­fy­ing phase head into the final round.

Each sam­ple of olio nuovo is assigned a num­ber, so none of the jurors knows any­thing about the sam­ple that they are tast­ing.

“Blind tast­ing is pri­mor­dial for the selec­tion of a good oil, just like wine,” Briffard said. ​“A taster’s judg­ment can be prej­u­diced by know­ing details of an oil, such as geo­graphic ori­gin, price or rep­u­ta­tion.”

Last year, Japanese pro­ducer Takao Olive emerged as the sur­prise win­ner for the award for best qual­ity; French pro­ducer Les Callis won for the best label, and Catalan pro­ducer Henri Mor took home the award for best bot­tling.

Along with the com­pe­ti­tion and the restau­rant pair­ing, there is a pub­lic event known as a par­cours, in which every­one can try all of these olive oils with bread in a num­ber of bak­eries around the city.

“We want every Parisian to be able to taste the fresh olive oil,” Déchelette said. ​“The taste is stronger, so it is eas­ier to under­stand what you pre­fer.”

The goal of Olio Nuovo Days con­tin­ues to be three­fold in the eyes of Déchelette. She seeks to help con­sumers find great olive oil while expand­ing and democ­ra­tiz­ing knowl­edge of what makes an olive oil stand out in the first place. She also aims to pro­mote col­lab­o­ra­tion between pro­duc­ers and chefs, the lat­ter of whom she views as strong pub­lic influ­encers.

Olio Nuovo Days will run from January 14 to 18 and take place at the Maison Métropole, Institut des Systèmes Complexes, and bak­eries and restau­rants around the city.

• Olio Nuovo Days