After the excitement of last year's awards for the Olive Producer's of North East Victoria (OPNEV), I wasn't sure how we would go this year.

We put in two Extra Virgin Olive Oils...an early pick and a late pick. What I was expecting was one oil would be gold, the other silver. That was based on my interpretation of sampling the two different harvests. The last harvest, I thought, was very close to last year's oil. The earlier harvest was a bit thinner in palate.

The lab tests indicated our late picked harvest was similar in benchmarks to last year's result. The early harvest was more divergent from last year's results.

I was sort of right, but not.

In fact, they both came through the awards with a silver medal, but they were almost identical...one scored 79, the other 80. (Gold is 85)
All that effort doing two harvests, different processing plants....huh!
So yes, the late pick produced the better oil, but only by one point out of a hundred.

Based solely on the lab tests I was firming up on the conclusion we are better aiming for a later than earlier harvest. Now with the judges' subjective assessment included on the mix the outcome is still pointing to a later harvest. But only just. Still trying to digest that!

I did buy some oil from an organic farm that was doing New Oil so I could compare theirs to ours, and I thought ours was better. Which was how it scored, so at that stage I was thinking my ability to assess on tasting was on track! And I wasn't wrong about our oil...just not quite right!

Overall the competition was a lesser event this year. Less entries, lower overall scores, and some categories no medals were awarded. Olives are an off/year on/year crop...you can sure see it at awards time! We are still waiting for the industry Australian/International award results, in another couple of weeks, so this story has another chapter to go before its finished.

We now have this year's oil available for sale via our shop, and it will be with our retailers shortly. You can try them out for yourself....!