The 2nd edition of Olive d’Or at SIAL Montreal
Trade-fair oil competitions look like marketing, and some are. But the serious ones run on the International Olive Council tasting method, and once you understand how a panel actually scores an oil, the medal on the bottle becomes a genuinely useful signal.
Every spring and autumn, somewhere between a food fair and a hotel conference room, panels of tasters sit down in front of rows of small blue glasses and decide which oils go home with medals. Producers spend real money entering. Importers read the results. Shoppers see a gold sticker and pay a little more. It is worth knowing what that sticker actually certifies — because it certifies something quite specific, and quite a lot that it does not.
How an oil is actually judged
The method is not a matter of opinion dressed up. It descends from the International Olive Council panel test, the same sensory procedure that legally separates extra virgin from virgin from lampante. The oil goes into a cobalt-blue glass so that colour — which tells you nothing reliable about quality and everything about the taster’s prejudices — is hidden. The glass is warmed in the palm, covered, swirled, uncovered and smelled. Then a small sip is drawn in sharply across the tongue with air, which aerosolises the oil and drives the volatile compounds up into the nose.
The judge is scoring three positive attributes — fruitiness, bitterness and pungency — on an intensity scale, and simultaneously hunting for defects. Defects are the harsh part. Fusty, musty, muddy sediment, winey-vinegary, rancid, metallic : if the median score of the panel finds any defect above zero, the oil is not extra virgin, whatever its label says, and in a competition it is simply out. Only after clearing that hurdle does anything else count.
| Category | Panel is looking for | Typical style |
|---|---|---|
| Light fruity | Delicate fruit, low bitterness, elegance and balance | Gentle, ripe-fruit oils ; often from later picking |
| Medium fruity | Clear fruit with definite bitterness and pepper, harmony | The broad middle where most fine oils sit |
| Intense fruity | Powerful green fruit, strong bitterness and pungency, no harshness | Early-harvest oils, high in phenols |
| Any category | Zero perceptible defect | Non-negotiable ; a defect ends the entry |
| Tie-breaks | Complexity, persistence, cleanness of finish | What separates a gold from a silver |
What the categories are for
Splitting entries into light, medium and intense fruity is not bureaucratic tidiness — it is the only way the contest can be fair. A delicate Ligurian-style oil and a fierce early-harvest green oil are not competing at the same thing, and judged head to head the loud one wins every time simply by shouting. The category system asks a better question: is this oil excellent as an example of what it is trying to be? A gold in light fruity means an oil that is delicate and flawless and interesting, which is genuinely harder than making a big peppery oil impressive.
This is also why a medal is more informative than most shoppers realise. The category tells you the style. If you dislike aggressive, throat-catching oils, a gold in the light or medium class is a far better buy than a gold in the intense class — the medal is not a ranking of oils against each other, it is a statement about quality within a style.
The blind spots nobody advertises
Now the uncomfortable part. A competition only judges the sample the producer sent, in the state it arrived, on the day it was tasted. Oil is a fresh juice that fades — the same lot can be a legitimate gold in April and a tired, flattened thing by the following autumn. The medal on the bottle in your hand may refer to a different harvest entirely, and if the label carries a medal year but no harvest date, that gap is doing work for the seller.
There is also selection bias in who enters. Small producers who sell out locally often see no reason to pay entry fees and ship samples across an ocean, so a shelf full of unmedalled bottles is not a shelf full of inferior oil. And the number of competitions has multiplied faster than the number of serious ones. A medal is only as good as the panel behind it — a contest judged by a properly constituted trained panel under IOC method is a real signal ; a rosette handed out at a regional fair may be little more than an attendance certificate.
How to use medals when you shop
- Check the harvest date first, medal second. A gold from three crops ago tells you about a bottle you cannot buy any more.
- Read the category. It tells you the style, which matters far more to your dinner than the metal colour.
- Prefer competitions that name their panel and method — IOC-method judging with a trained panel is the standard to look for.
- Do not read absence as failure. Plenty of excellent small growers never enter anything.
- Trust your own palate over the sticker : buy two medalled oils in different categories and find out which style you actually like.
Olive oil competitions : common questions
Why do judges use blue glasses?
To hide the colour. Oil colour depends on variety, ripeness and filtration and tells you almost nothing about quality, but it strongly biases tasters — greener oils get read as fresher. Blue glass removes the temptation.
What counts as a defect?
The standard sensory faults : fusty or muddy from fruit left in heaps too long, winey or vinegary from fermentation, rancid from oxidation, plus musty, metallic and others. Any perceptible defect disqualifies an oil from extra virgin.
Does a gold medal mean the oil is the best?
It means the panel judged it excellent and defect-free within its style category on the day it was tasted. It is not a ranking against every oil on the market, and it says nothing about the bottle you are holding if the harvest is different.
Are all olive oil competitions credible?
No. The credible ones use a trained panel and the International Olive Council tasting method, publish their categories and judges, and reject defective oils outright. Others are closer to marketing exercises.
Should I pay more for a medalled oil?
Sometimes — a medal from a serious competition is real evidence of a clean, well-made oil. But a recent harvest date, a named variety and a dark bottle are more reliable everyday indicators of what you will actually taste.
The best thing a competition does is not for you, it is for the producer. Sending your oil to a proper panel is one of the few honest mirrors in this trade: you find out whether that faint winey note you had convinced yourself was character is in fact a fermentation defect, and whether your harvest schedule is working. I have seen a grower change their entire picking window after one panel report. The medal is a nice sticker. The scoresheet is the valuable part, and the good producers know it.
Based on the International Olive Council sensory method and standard competition practice.