Recognition for best olive oil
There are now more olive oil competitions than there are weeks in the year, and a well-organised producer can paper a bottle in medals. Some of those awards are rigorous. Knowing which is a genuinely useful skill.
Somewhere in the world this month, a panel of trained tasters is sitting in a row of booths under coloured light, working through numbered blue glasses of olive oil and writing down scores. Competition tasting is the closest thing this trade has to a public quality standard, and at its best it is rigorous, anonymous and genuinely informative. It is also a marketing industry, and the two things live uncomfortably close together.
How a proper panel actually judges
The mechanics are stricter than most people expect. Oils are tasted blind, from opaque coloured glasses — usually cobalt blue — specifically so that colour cannot influence the judgement. Colour in olive oil tells you almost nothing about quality : it reflects chlorophyll and carotenoid levels, which depend on ripeness and variety, not on virtue. A brilliant emerald oil can be defective and a pale gold one superb.
The glass is warmed in the hand to around body heat, covered, swirled to release volatiles, sniffed, then sipped with a sharp intake of air to spray the oil across the palate. Judges score for defects first — fusty, musty, winey, muddy, rancid — because any measurable defect disqualifies an oil from extra virgin entirely, no matter how attractive its fruitiness. Only oils that clear that hurdle are then scored positively for fruitiness, bitterness and pungency, and grouped into intensity classes so that a delicate oil is not judged against a robust one.
| Signal | What it suggests | How much to trust it |
|---|---|---|
| Blind judging, trained panel | Proper sensory methodology | High |
| Intensity classes | Delicate oils judged fairly against peers | High |
| Published judge list | Accountability | High |
| Very high medal ratio | Nearly everyone wins something | Low |
| Large entry fee, no free entry | Revenue-driven competition | Low |
| Sticker with no year | May be an old award on a new bottle | Very low |
| Harvest date on the label | The producer is confident about freshness | Highest |
What a medal cannot tell you
Here is the caveat that matters most, and competitions themselves will tell you it if asked. A medal is awarded to a sample, submitted at a particular moment, usually from a specific lot, often the producer’s best. It is not awarded to the bottle you are holding. If that bottle is from a later harvest, a different lot, or has spent fourteen months on a bright shelf, the award describes something you are not buying.
Watch for the year. A gold medal sticker with no vintage on it may be commemorating a triumph from several harvests ago, which is a legitimate thing for a producer to be proud of and a useless thing for you to buy on. The same goes for medal density : when a competition awards prizes to a large share of its entrants, the medal is closer to a participation record than a distinction. The reputable competitions are quite open about their pass rates.
What awards are genuinely good for
None of this means competitions are worthless — far from it. They do three valuable things. They give small producers, who have no marketing budget at all, a route to visibility that does not depend on shelf space. They enforce sensory discipline : a producer who submits to blind panels every year finds out quickly and unsentimentally whether their oil has a defect they had stopped noticing. And they educate, by demonstrating that oils are not simply better or worse but different in intensity, and that a delicate oil and a robust one are both legitimate.
The practical way to use an award is as a shortlist, not a verdict. A medal tells you a producer was making excellent oil in a given year and cared enough to submit it blind. Then check the harvest date on the actual bottle, check the packaging is dark, and taste it. In that order.
Using awards sensibly
- Treat a medal as a shortlist entry, not proof of what is in your bottle.
- Look for the year on the sticker : an undated medal may be old news.
- Colour is irrelevant — that is why judges use blue glasses.
- Competitions that award most entrants are advertising, not judging.
- The harvest date still beats every medal on the label.
Olive oil competitions: common questions
Why do judges use blue glasses?
To hide the oil’s colour. Colour reflects chlorophyll and carotenoid content, which depend on variety and ripeness rather than quality, and would otherwise bias the panel.
How are competition oils scored?
Defects are assessed first — any measurable defect disqualifies an oil from extra virgin. Oils that pass are then scored for fruitiness, bitterness and pungency, and grouped by intensity class so like is judged against like.
Does a gold medal guarantee the bottle I buy is good?
No. The award applies to a submitted sample from a particular lot and harvest. Your bottle may be a different year, a different lot, or simply older and badly stored.
Are all olive oil competitions credible?
No. The good ones judge blind with trained panels, publish their judges and award a modest share of entrants. Some exist mainly on entry fees and hand out medals to nearly everyone.
What is more useful than an award?
A harvest date, dark packaging and a specific named origin. Those describe the bottle in front of you : a medal describes a sample from the past.
I have known producers who won serious international medals and never printed a sticker, because they knew the winning lot had sold out within weeks and thought it dishonest to trade on it. I have also seen bottles carrying four medals from a harvest three years gone. Both were within the rules. If you want a shortcut : buy the medal-winning producer, not the medal-winning bottle, and always check what year you are actually holding.
Based on standard sensory judging methodology and competition practice.