Uljara Baioco Awarded for Buza Monovarietal

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

Winning the NYIOOC award is a sign that we are doing the work we love so much very well. This competition is telling us that we are doing it right and that we have to keep it up. It is also a loudspeaker for us as a traditional family business.

Ester Geissa Duric, CEO

In the 2020/21 crop year, the company produced 6,000 liters of extra virgin olive oil in Istria using traditional methods. Uljara Baioco earned the Silver Award for a delicate Buza.

"Winning the NYIOOC award is a sign that we are doing the work we love so much very well," Ester Geissa Duric, the company's CEO, said. "This competition is telling us that we are doing it right and that we have to keep it up. It is also a loudspeaker for us as a traditional family business."

For the producers behind Uljara Baioco, the 2020 harvest brought plenty of challenges with it, including the Covid-19 pandemic, which drastically slowed sales at their shop.

"This year, we had to adapt to the new safety measures during the harvest due to Covid-19," Geissa Duric said. "Also, since the drop-in visits to our shop in Vodnjan were restricted due to limited movement on the eve of the crisis, we also upgraded our website to make our oil accessible to everyone."

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.