Greece Wins First Place for World’s Best Olive Oil

The world’s best gourmet olive oil is Greek. Αn acclaimed olive oil producer from Sparta, in southern Greece has won the prestigious EVOO global olive oil awards 2022 for its exquisite gourmet olive oils, launching Greece to the top spot in this category.

Sakellaropoulos Organic Farms won the first position in the world as a company-producer of gourmet olive oils as well as the first four places in the Top 5 Flavored Oils of the World 2022 for their quality and taste.

A total ten gourmet olive oils of the same producer ranked in the Top 20 of the world and in the Best Flavored Oils of the Year 2022.

This brought Greece to the top place in the Top 5 Countries of Flavored Oils for the year, as it contributed 35 percent of the total points received by Greece in the Flavored Oils of the World category of the global ranking.

Global olive oil ranking competition

“At the end of each olive harvest year, the World Association of Journalists and Writers of Wines and Spirits (WAWWJ) collects and ranks all the olive oils that have been selected in 32 recognized international competitions throughout the world, for their taste and quality, with the method of blind tasting based on the rules of the International Olive Council,” Sakellaropoulos Organic Farms explains on its website.

This global olive oil ranking, called EVOO World Ranking (EVOOWR), is part of the WAWWJ world ranking, created in 1997.

This year, EVOOWR examined 18,312 olive oil samples from 38 olive-producing countries and 1,986 companies-producers respectively, which had already been distinguished in thirty-two international competitions.

Record-breaking olive oil from Greece

Sakellaropoulos’ Masterpiece Blend EVOO, the product which was awarded the first place worldwide for 2022, broke a new record of points in its category, gathering 652.13 points, when in 2021, in the first year of its release, it was awarded the second place worldwide.

“The first place in the world, as a company-producer in our category, was a dream that came true after 31 years of continuous work and effort,” olive oil producer George Sakellaropoulos told ANA-MPA.

In a previous interview with Greek Reporter a few years ago, Sakellaropoulos recalled:

When we started in 1992, we were entering into uncharted waters, because organic farming was completely unknown then in Greece. We chose our area, Sparta, Laconia, where the conditions (climate, soil, zero environmental pollution) are ideal for the cultivation of olives, which have been cultivated in this area for many years.

His company has won 617 international awards for taste and quality in global competitions so far. This number is an evolving world record of distinctions for a Greek olive producer that cultivates, produces, and packages exclusively his own organic olive products as a Single Estate and Terroir organic producer.

In the last five years alone, Sakellaropoulos’ olive oils ranked first in the world four times. This is something that has never happened with another olive oil producer at a global level in the gourmet category.

“Within these 31 years, we have been evolving, moving forward with innovations and in new areas of olive growing, in the production of high quality olive oil, in original organic and gourmet olive oil and table olive products, reaching Regenerative cultivation,” Sakellaropoulos concluded to ANA-MPA. “Our goal is to contribute, so that our country and “Greek olive oil” continue to play a leading role in the global olive-growing map.”