We are so excited and happy to share some really excellent news with you all. As you know, last harvest season was a traumatic one for many olive growers in California, Il Fiorello included. With a 2018 harvest volume reduced by close to 80% over 2017, we struggled just to find enough olives to mill. Not only were there fewer olives, but the size and oil content of those olives were reduced. All of that required careful attention to our milling processes, and many were adjusted to compensate for the differences in our fruit.
Fortunately, with the combined quality of our amazing Pieralisi milling equipment and our crack milling team, the oils we were able to produce are now showing to be of very high quality indeed. We are happy to report that with the results of two major 2019 olive oil competitions announced so far this year, Il Fiorello’s Olive Oils have won a combined total of 15 medals to date. Now, winning medals is a heady experience, and we won’t deny that we are thrilled each time it happens, but that isn’t the reason we enter competitions. We do it to benchmark our oils against the best in the world, because we want the people who use our oils, especially you…our Grove Club family, to know that you are getting the best Olive Oils available.
So…drum roll, please…here are the results so far…
2019 Los Angeles International Olive Oil Competition
Best of Show, Best of Class & Gold Medal
Lemon Co-Milled Olive Oil
Silver Medal
Lime Co-Milled Olive Oil
Kaffir Lime Co-Milled Olive Oil
Mandarin Co-Milled Olive Oil
Artisan Packaging Design
Bronze Medal
Organic Italian Blend Certified Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2019 California State Fair Olive Oil Competition
Best of Class
Kaffir Lime Co-Milled Olive Oil
Gold Medal
Kaffir Lime Co-Milled Olive Oil
Lemon Co-Milled Olive Oil
Pendolino Certified Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Silver Medal
Arbequina Certified Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Bronze Medal
Mandarin Co-Milled Olive Oil
Lime Co-Milled Olive Oil
Some familiar names, some new ones, and many familiar names missing. One of the familiar names, especially if you received the January 2019 Grove Club selections, is our Lime Co-Milled Olive Oil, winner of a Silver Medal on the International stage this year!!
An unfamiliar name, that we are hoping will become a favorite, is our new Kaffir Lime Co-Milled Olive Oil, winner of Best of Class and a Gold Medal at the State Fair, and a Silver Medal in Los Angeles. Milled for the first time in 2018, this delicately fragrant limited edition Co-Milled Olive Oil will only be available to Grove Club members as part of the May 2019 Grove Club selections. Due to the limited quantity, this oil will not be made available to our regular retail customers; any bottles left after our May collection will only be available for repeat purchase by our Grove Club family.
If you’re noticing a few significant regulars from our Extra Virgin Olive Oil line-up missing from this list, such as Athena’s Blend, and our many single varietal Extra Virgin Oils, we’re sad to tell you that we just didn’t have enough olives to mill those oils in 2018. We’ll be relying on our inventory reserves to carry us through to our 2019 harvest…though there are a few surprise limited edition 2018 Olive Oils coming exclusively to the Grove Club in July and September. We’ll tell you more about those soon, and we’ll keep you up-to-date on news about the new crop as the growing season goes on.
The competition season goes on as well. We’ve entered two more International competitions, and two more regional competitions. We’ll announce the results of those as they become available.
We hope you enjoy your award winning Olive Oils, and we hope to have more great news to share soon!!
