Italian Winners Pour in From North to South at World Olive Oil Competition

Part of our con­tin­u­ing cov­er­age of the 2020 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

The best Italian olive oils do not always come from the large farms of the south nor from the beau­ti­ful hills of cen­tral Italy.

Sometimes they come from the north – even as far north as the foot of the Alps. That is the case with 46° Parallelo, which received a Gold Award at the 2020 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

The olive oil is named after the geo­graphic par­al­lel where the olives are grown. It is a prod­uct of many small pro­duc­ers who gather in a coop­er­a­tive busi­ness, Agraria Riva del Garda.

46° Parallelo was rec­og­nized for its organic ori­gin and its tast­ing sen­sa­tions of herbs, green almond, mint, fen­nel and green fruit. Still, its world-class qual­ity did not come easy at the end of a tur­bu­lent year for Italian agri­cul­ture.

“Last sea­son was a hard one for north­ern Italy, with a record fruit drop in July that stole almost 80 per­cent of the total yield,” Furio Batterini, who leads Agraria’s tech­ni­cal unit, told Olive Oil Times.

“Then came the olive fruit fly,” he added. ​“We do not usu­ally get the fly as much as else­where, since our par­tic­u­lar lake­side cli­mate mixes with the colder north­ern air, but when just a few olives remain on the trees, that is when the fly can hurt more.”

Almost 1,000 asso­ci­ated farm­ers grow and har­vest their olives in an area cov­er­ing 620 acres, where they fight the olive fly with bio­log­i­cal traps.

“We are flat­tered by such an award after such a chal­leng­ing sea­son,” Batterini said.

Another Italian pro­ducer com­ing from an unusual loca­tion for world-class olive oils is Palazzo di Varignana. Close to Bologna, in the Emilia-Romagna region, the company’s organic extra vir­gin olive oils won two Gold Awards at the 2020 NYIOOC.

“Vargnano and Claterna are two extra vir­gin olive oils that come from the typ­i­cal and tra­di­tional local olive vari­eties, Nostrana and Ghiacciola,” Chiara Del Vecchio, the com­pa­ny’s olive oil project man­ager, told Olive Oil Times.

“Since 2015, we began work­ing to restore and recover the olive groves that once filled these lands, at least until the sec­ond half of the eigh­teenth cen­tury, when adverse cli­mate con­di­tions put a halt to that pro­duc­tion,” she added. ​“We founded our com­pany focus­ing on inno­v­a­tive pro­ce­dures and busi­ness, and now man­age groves on more than 320,000 acres.”

The com­pany ambi­tions include extend­ing the area ded­i­cated to the olive trees and a pri­vate oil mill that, pend­ing autho­riza­tion, should be com­pleted by 2021.

Farther south, in the heart of the Italian penin­sula, the Umbrian pro­ducer Farchioni Olii won three Gold Awards

“We are very sat­is­fied with these results,” owner Marco Farchioni told Olive Oil Times. ​“Also because we con­tribute to the con­fir­ma­tion of the world-class qual­i­ties of Italian olive oil.”

Farchioni Olii is a farm whose tra­di­tion dates back to 1780, when Marco’s ances­tors began replac­ing the fruits of their ter­ri­tory with olive oil, wine, beer and flour.

The three olive oils that con­quered the palate of this year’s panel of judges included Selezione oli del Mediterraneo, an extra vir­gin olive oil born from the expe­ri­ence of the grow­ers in select­ing the best olive vari­eties of the sea­son; Collezione di Famiglia, a mono­va­ri­etal Coratina; and DOP Umbria Colli Martani, made of olives com­ing ​“from the dry and stony grounds of Umbria,” Farchioni said. It is an extra vir­gin olive oil crafted from four cul­ti­vars: Frantoio, Leccino, Moraiolo and San Felice.

In nearby Tuscany, Entimio Tuscan won a Silver Award for its Entimio Distinto, a blend made mostly out of Frantoio olives, with some Leccino and Moraiolo too. The oil is pro­duced by Fattoria Bini, a farm in the Chianti area of Tuscany, whose activ­i­ties date back cen­turies.

“We part­nered with a tra­di­tional, his­tor­i­cal olive oil pro­ducer that spe­cial­ized in select­ing the best olives needed to pro­duce world-class olive oils” Daniele Santini, owner of the Entimio, told Olive Oil Times. ​“Even with a very chal­leng­ing sea­son for olives, Entimio Distinto was rec­og­nized for its high polyphe­nol con­tent and very spe­cial taste.”

To the 2020 NYIOOC judg­ment panel, the Tuscan extra vir­gin olive oil offers tast­ing sen­sa­tions of arti­choke, almond, wal­nut, pep­per and green pep­per.