Accolades

About a year ago I got in touch with Emmanuelle Dechelette (pictured), founder and curator of an olive oil competition called Olio Nuovo Days that's held yearly in Paris. The competition had caught my eye, as had one of Emmanuelle's contacts here in Italy, a man named Fil Bucchino who sells premium evoo made from Italian olive groves that are in the process of being restored and revitalized (like ours).

In early 2024 I had only been caring for Poggiosole's olive groves for two years (our 2021 harvest was the last conducted under the guidance of Paolo Semplici and Marco Marchi, our inner grove's prior caretakers). It seemed a little early to be entering our evoo in any sort of contest, although I was happy to have some local experts taste the results of our 2023 harvest, which also formed the basis of a successful Kickstarter campaign we ran in January of last year. But I remembered Emmanuelle and we stayed in touch. I even sent her a small bottle of our 2023 evoo, which she received graciously, noting that its pungent flavor profile was "a little bit unbalanced" but nonetheless very good: "...an EVOO for people know extra virgin olive oil". She encouraged me to consider entering Poggiosole's evoo in one of Olio Nuovo Days' future editions.

This year I did just that, even though it's still very early days for us, particularly for what concerns crop size, meaning how much evoo we actually make (we have yet to surpass 165 liters in any given year).

Olio Nuovo Days evaluates olive oil across several categories or metrics, including Quality, Packaging, and Kids, meaning its appeal to a jury of under-12's. I was most interested in the first of these, and sent, as required, six 250ml bottles of our filtered 2024 oil to Emmanuelle in early March. I was travelling last week when I was sent a link to the results, and only read the email this past Sunday. I was totally surprised!

Our 2024 filtered evoo was one of 32 Northern Hemisphere extra virgin olive oils to win a "Premium Gold Award" for Quality (out of a field of 147 participants) at Olio Nuovo Days 2025. Emmanelle emailed her congratulations, adding that for a third harvest this was quite an achievement. Of course I shared the news with several of our Kickstarter donors and friends and family who have participated in our harvests over the past three years. I posted about the "win" on Poggiosole's LinkedIn page. Yesterday Vittorio stopped by and we high-fived. Now I'm finally sharing the news here. I'm proud, and have even ordered a batch of stickers of the contest's Premium Gold "medal". Those will make their way onto tins of oil we sell or ship over the remainder of this year... until our next harvest in November! 🌞