Marmaro Wins Gold for Chalkidiki Monovarietal

Greek producer Garofallos Dimitrios has won a Gold Award at the 2020 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition for its Marmaro brand, a medium-intensity Chalkidiki.

I am very happy, proud and grateful because all the hard work that I and my colleagues put in has been rewarded. It is a great honor for us and my home, Chalkidiki, to have our olive oil recognized worldwide.

Dimitrios Garofallos, owner

In the 2019/20 season, the company produced 2,500 liters of extra virgin olive oil in the eastern Greek region of Chalkidiki using traditional methods.

"I am very happy, proud and grateful because all the hard work that I and my colleagues put in has been rewarded," owner Dimitrios Garofallos said. "It is a great honor for us and my home, Chalkidiki, to have our olive oil recognized worldwide."

"We want to enter the American market and we hope that this award will help us, in general, to create as many points of sale as we can in the whole world," he added.

For Garofallos, this year's award is especially satisfying. While he said every season is difficult, the climate during the 2019/20 harvest proved to be especially challenging.

"The harvest season was very difficult, as it is every year, because the olives are picked by hands directly from the tree," he said.

"In the middle of summer, our olive groves were hit by hail and due to the heavy rains and increased humidity, the olive fruit fly came," Garofallos added. "This was a big challenge to achieve the production of high-quality olive oil."

The NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, held each spring in New York, is the world's largest and most prestigious olive oil contest and 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