A new Olive
Oil competition planned for North America
during 2015 will reset consumers’ expectations of awards in the olive oil
industry. The results will be announced at a two-day conference in Chicago
The
competition will introduce a number of innovations by evaluating the olive oils
on a range of attributes important to consumers:
- Entries will be collected off-the-shelf
as the consumers would buy the products
- The olive oils must be
available in the
- Scoring will include points
for:
- flavour
- percentage of healthy
monounsaturated fats
- smoke point
- price
The winners
will reflect ‘value for money‘ and the judging panel will be consumer-based.
The
organisers are the North American Olive Oil Association (NAOOA) in association
with International Extra Virgin Olive Oil Savantes. The competition is designed
to give greater credibility to awarded olive oils.
An off-the
shelf competition is unique and highly credible because it prevents suppliers from
developing an olive oil to be used for competition entries that is different
from the oil sold in the marketplace under the same brand.
Entries for
the competition will open in early 2015 with the winners being announced at the
Chicago
Eryn Balch,
Executive Vice President of the NAOOA, when announcing the new competition
said: ‘We hope to redesign the landscape of olive oil competitions worldwide by
concentrating on the factors important to consumers, namely flavor, health
benefits, smoke point and price. The concept of value for money – high quality
flavorsome extra virgin olive oil at a reasonable price – will catch on.’
She added
’we have also included a category for olive oil grade products to communicate
to consumers that although extra virgin is the best olive oil, all olive oil is
better than other vegetable oils’.
Further
details of the competition and Chicago Conference will be available through a
link to www.savantes.com by the end of
January.
