Lasitia Awarded for Masterful Blend at World Competition

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

Lasitia's blenders – me and Odysseas Vlachavas – made a careful selection of the best olive oils produced in the region. This effort is now rewarded with this prestigious NYIOCC distinction, a fact that makes us proud and excited.

Tammy Karambelas, product specialist

In the 2020/21 crop year, the company produced 3,000 liters of extra virgin olive oil in Sitia Lasithiou Kritis using traditional methods. Lasitia earned the Silver Award for its Sitia 0.3 brand, a medium Koroneiki.

"Lasitia's blenders – me and Odysseas Vlachavas – made a careful selection of the best olive oils produced in the region," product specialist Tammy Karambelas said. "This effort is now rewarded with this prestigious NYIOCC distinction, a fact that makes us proud and excited."

"And this is only the beginning of a beautiful, long trip offering support to farmers producing the best Sitian extra virgin olive oil," she added.

For Karambelas, the next step for Lasitia is to introduce their unique product to the rest of the world and establish the eastern tip of Crete as one of the world's top olive oil-producing spots.

"We at Lasitia had the task of not only re-introducing an already recognized Sitia olive oil, which was absent from the market for some years now, but also to make it stand out as in the past was a solid winner," she said. "We tried to bottle the pure essence of the unique Sitian terroir with the vast grove producing pure olive oil for centuries."

The NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition 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.