Fontanaro Wins Gold for Olio Fonte della Pace

Italian producer Fontanaro has won a Gold Award at the 2021 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, the world's most prestigious olive oil quality contest.

We are very happy to have won the Gold Award for the second year in a row. This is another important achievement that repays all our efforts.

Lucia Verdacchi, owner

In the 2020/21 crop year, the company produced five tons of organic extra virgin olive oil in Umbria from a blend of olives using traditional methods. Fontanaro earned the Gold Award for its Olio Fonte della Pace brand, an organic robust blend.

"We are very happy to have won the Gold Award for the second year in a row," owner Lucia Verdacchi said. "This is another important achievement that repays all our efforts."

While this year's Gold is the seventh total accolade the company has earned at the NYIOOC, it is certainly one of the most gratifying after a complicated harvest in 2020 exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Finding personnel during the pandemic was challenging," Verdacchi said. "Maintaining our standard of high-quality management of the whole value chain, from taking care of our organic olives, milling with our high-tech mill, filtering all production and storing under nitrogen, was made more complicated."

The NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, held each spring in New York, is the world's largest and most prestigious olive oil contest. Its annual listing of award winners is considered the authoritative guide to the year’s best extra virgin olive oils.

The complete list of winners can be viewed on the Official Index of the World's Best Olive Oils.